Aliens: Blood
by Bryan Oryan
Summary: In the first movie the creature was disintegrated in the fiery glow of the Narcisus' afterburner... The queen ejected from the Sulaco wasn't disposed of in such a clinical method... she could do nothing but lie dormant and wait for her time... New Chapter
1. Prologue

Aliens: Blood

Prologue

Darkness engulfed her gargantuan form as she spiralled through the immense gulf of space, her limbs drawn in and coiled into a foetal position she hadn't experienced since her birth.

The depths of the endless void were freezing cold, though she couldn't feel it through her thickened chitinous hide or in the acidic blood that flowed through her veins. Tendrils of opaque saliva flowed from her mouth, frozen pendants hanging like stalactites in a subterranean cave.

She had no conception of time, couldn't tell how long she had lain dormant in suspended animation while she had drifted past moons and planetoids, celestial bodies far from her grasp. As she slept, she remembered her children, the hundreds of her brood that had been lost in the searing white fire that had engulfed her nest. She remembered the woman warrior who had obliterated her hive; who had fought her with a metal construct, seared her flesh, and threw her from the flying platform she had infiltrated. She also remembered the last of her children who had stowed away with her, felt their presence as she slipped away from them, and sank into a state of limbo while she rested. Though it had taken time; years perhaps, her rage and anger had subsided and gave way to a sense of surreal calmness, for she knew that her time would come again, for she was eternal.

Her slumber was disturbed as her enhanced senses detected something, an immense presence, a concentration of life force she hadn't experienced in her lifetime: far stronger than the creatures she had sensed around her previous nesting ground. Hundreds, maybe thousands of potential hosts were nearby, and within her reach. They seemed to be moving towards her, slowly approaching and bringing with it the chance of creating another hive.

After what could have been a decade of being immobilised, her limbs stretched, talons flexed, and the coiled prehensile tail slowly snaked out from around her. Shifting the massive crown of her head, her lower jaw shifted forward from within the protective cowl surrounding her muzzle, lips parting and teeth gleaming dimly in the faint light of the nearest star. With a silent scream, the saliva caked around her mouth fractured and broke away into crystals as she tried to move, to alter her trajectory and reach out to grip one of the star ships as they passed by.

Her clawed hands brushed the slick metallic surface of the vehicle, and with mindless ferocity she erupted into a violent fury, scrabbling with nails and tail to secure a strong hold. Her fingers tore through the hull of the ship, and she created her own handholds as she slowly heaved herself across the surface of the spacecraft.

As she moved closer towards a familiar panel on the surface, the mix of the vibrations of the engine and the potency of the life force within the ship excited her, urging her onwards as she moved towards her target. The frayed hull of the ship sliced her digits as she moved, spewing crystals of frozen acid as she went, until she reached a control panel beside a door marked 'Airlock'.

The writing meant nothing to her, as did the strange symbols on the controls, but she knew these small pieces of plastic could help her: they had in the past, when the metal cage had pulled her out the depths of her doomed nursery. They had also aided the female warrior in throwing her from the ship.

She banged and pounded mindlessly at the controls, the blood from her fresh wounds seeping onto the buttons and slowly melting through wiring behind them. The panel erupted in a small shower of sparks, and the seam of the airlock parted, giving her a space to work on with her ungodly strength as she pried to port open, heaving her immense bulk into the ship and buckling slightly as the pull of gravity quickly dragged her down. The weightlessness she had experienced for so long quickly lost, she lay in the airlock as the door automatically sealed behind her and a rush of fresh air flooded into the room, trying to become accustomed to the environment that she had been missing for what seemed like a lifetime.

After she had rested and recovered, she would have to begin work on her new hive, and she would have to move fast before she was discovered.


	2. Chapter 1

I

_The Eden _was an immense colony settling ship some three miles long and five hundred meters wide. Spanning over twenty levels, the ship was one of three hydroponics ships in a fleet of ten. While _The Eden_, along with_ The Babylon _and _Gaia _carried all manner of flora and fauna for new settlements on distant worlds in the giant domes that ran their length, another three ships carried everything needed to add breathable air to even the most barren of planetoids. The remaining four ships were Behemoth-class Marine cruisers, assigned to provide protection and deter any would-be raiders; colonising ships were a valuable commodity and carried billions of dollars worth of equipment, most of which could fetch a very high price on the black market.

The control room of _The Eden_ was a large rectangular room set over two levels, with a balcony looking out across the lower level and towards the view port that dominated two thirds of the largest wall. The window itself was constructed from toughened glass three feet thick, reinforced with a titanium frame and programmed to seal up with steel shutters should it ever become breached.

Before the view port there were three control desks, two used primarily for navigation and the third for communication across the fleet, while the balcony held two terminals for sensor readings across the ship, both internal and external, as well as a larger consol to be manned by the captain of the ship. This large desk held a number of monitors and displays, each of which were fed information from all other terminals on the bridge.

John Tomly sat at this desk, his feet stretched out before him as he sipped lazily at the tepid coffee that filled the plastic disposable cup he held. He wasn't the captain, he was just the pilot, he had another ten or fifteen years before he could even think about becoming a captain. And when he _did _become a captain, he wasn't going to be stuck on long-haul journeys of shake-n-bake colony settling fleets. He wanted to be in charge of the deep space exploration vehicles; that way he would travel from system to system, cataloguing different planets that may be capable of supporting human or animal life. He'd rather do that instead of being stuck on the ship doing the settling work: as it was, the fleet could spend months in orbit while the terraforming took place on the planets surface; at least the exploration ships were always on the move.

At the moment, Tomly, or JT to his friends, was manning the graveyard shift for the watch, keeping an eye on all the systems while simulated fleet time dictated it was one in the morning, and everyone else should be in bed.

It wasn't all that bad, though: his friend and co-pilot Naki Redhorn had also been assigned on the same duty rota. The large Native American sat at his own desk, the chair barely able to contain the muscular bulk of the man as he occasionally ran a diagnostic check on the course of the ship was currently on, or the engine status. His long black hair had been coiled around beneath the cap he wore, keeping the flowing hair from getting in his way as he worked. His dark brown eyes were set close together, and his brow always seemed to be knitted into a permanent frown. His nose looked like it had been broken one too many times. He held a plastic tube in one hand, occasionally lifting it to his mouth and pressing it to his lips and breathing through the replacement cigarette, taking in a drag of simulated nicotine. He frowned in disgust at the device he held and slipped it into his pocket, wishing not for the first time that real cigarettes hadn't been banned from consumption aboard deep space vehicles.

"How's everything going over there?" Naki announced, spinning around in his chair to face the balcony, then standing to his full height of six foot so he could see over the railing. JT sighed and shook his head.

"Same old stuff, same as every other day. Power output in the green, atmosphere and pressure in all the domes nominal."

"What about that?" asked Naki as he made his way up onto the balcony by hauling his bulk over the railing. He was right next to the stairs, but preferred to participate in as much physical activity as possible. After all, long shifts sitting in an uncomfortable chair didn't offer much of a workout for him. He pointed at the command screens in front of JT, and the blinking lights that flashed on part of the readout.

"Looks like a malfunction with an airlock. Readout says it was breached about an hour ago, then sealed up automatically. Stray rock fragment, probably, but the hole's not opened up again. Near the main drive engines, do we have any people in that sector?"

"Check the manifest," Naki suggested, withdrawing his replacement cigarette again and taking another drag. "There's always one crew of grease monkeys around there somewhere, even in the middle of the night."

"This is the same shit that supposed to be picked up in the regular maintenance," grumbled JT, hammering on the keyboard in front of him. A list of crew on duty scrolled across his screen, and stopped on a list of seven names, each highlighted name flashing. "Collins is the section chief on duty at the moment. Call him on the com, get him and his pack of monkeys on the job. The last thing we want to do is piss away our atmosphere. I'll get hold of the graveyard shift on _The Babylon _and _Gaia_, see if they've had any similar problems, it could be a batch of faulty parts we picked up on Gamma Outpost."

"Gamma Outpost," Naki smiled to himself as he plugged the comset he carried into the main communication board. "I miss that place. I mean, it was a real dive, had a bad case of rust and fatigue, but the women… oh my, the women…"

"Yeah, and soon as your wife hears about it, she'll scalp you."

"That's a horrible thing to say, _paleface_," Naki said, his scowl thickening as he glared at him. "My wife won't find out."

0

"Jesus," Jameson muttered to himself as he pressed his hand into a thick mound of lubricant jelly that had been left on the top of one of the coolant vents that scattered the engineering level he was currently on. It was bad enough that he'd been sent down to one of the hottest levels of the ship to work on, searching for the apparent fault that may have triggered an airlock malfunction. One of the more senior men on the shift had suggested it could have been an automated response by the ship if it was getting too hot and pressurised inside: a lot of the larger and older colony settling ships were well known for being temperamental and a lore unto themselves, and a logic circuit somewhere deciding to do something illogical wasn't unheard of. Because Jameson was the youngest and greenest on the shift, he'd been sent into the inferno to check the systems there.

He sniffed at the thick gelatinous liquid that coated his had, then wiped it on the back of his leg, wrinkling his nose. The lubricant jelly normally had a strong oily smell, but this particular batch had a very acidic odour; the heat had probably made it go bad. He made a note of the location of the jelly, and that he'd have to report it to the line supervisor when he got back. Supplies like lubricant weren't easy to come by in the middle of nowhere, and leaving it out to go bad in the heat wasn't something he wanted to encourage.

Jameson unfastened the top of his work suit and pulled his arms from the sleeves, tying them around his waist before pulling off his grime-encrusted vest and throwing it to the ground. He ventured deeper into the forest of pipes and wires that made up the level, ducking beneath pipes that clattered and vents that hissed jets of scalding steam as he tried to make his way to the logic bank that was nestled in the centre of the deck.

"Next work rota I get, I'm getting off this barge," he muttered to himself, cursing as he scratched his shoulder on a low-hanging exposed wire. "Then I'm gonna quit, design star cruisers…"

He dropped to the floor and crawled beneath a length of thick steel piping. He could feel the heat on his back as he shuffled along the warm deck plate and clambered to his feet, careful to not use any of the scalding pipe work as leverage. "And I'm gonna make the engineering level's the biggest frigging level of all. With no pipes, or wires, or nozzles that piss steam in my face!"

His voice raised in volume until he shouted the last few words, then he relaxed, his shoulders slumping forward. He continued on his trek through the conduits, constantly wiping sweat and grime from his face with the palm of his hands.

The deeper into the labyrinth he went, the more the humidity levels increased. Piping and wiring seemed to meld and twist together, the mechanical seemed to flow into an organic mess, and the smooth deck plates took on a ridged appearance, similar to roots coated in a thick layer of a viscous and translucent liquid.

"Shit," moaned Jameson, kneeling to prod the obscure coating that lined the floor with one of the wrenches that hung from his tool belt. It looked like some seeds from one of the hydroponics domes had found their way into the engines and gone to seed. It had happened once before, and had taken a week to clean out the system. But, on the plus side, he'd found out what had tampered with the logic circuits: they'd probably been punctured with roots and shoots. He reached for the small communication headset he wore, but held off on operating it. Signals rarely got through all the pipe work and heat of the engineering levels, the added foliage would only add to the distortion. He'd have to work his way back through the pipes to get a clear signal. Plus, he knew that the longer he waited to get back and pass on the news, the less time he'd have on his shift until he was relieved by the morning shift.

Realising there was no rush in getting back to report this, he stepped closer to the organic matter that coated the pipes. He didn't know much about botany, that was the job of the scientists aboard, but he knew about machines, and this plant-like material seemed to be a mix of both.

Curiosity got the better of him, and he stalked further back into the chamber, hoping to find the source of the plant infection. The web that covered the floor began to show signs of further development in that giant fruits seemed to have blossomed on the ground: large grey blooms, three feet in height, lay scattered around the floor, covered in the same liquid as the roots. He reached out and touched the ovoid closest to him, feeling the flesh of the fruit quiver and pulse beneath his touch. Whatever strange plant this was, the swollen fruit seemed overripe, almost ready to burst. As he withdrew his hand a trail of thick viscous fluid pulled away with him, and with a chattering rattle, the top of the fruit sac peeled open, lips blossoming open like a flower at dawn.

A sickly odour washed over him, an acrid and bitter stench that reminded him of lemon and bile mixed together, and the centre of the opened flower swirled and twitched as folds of pale white flesh rolled over one another.

"What the fuck?"

Something stirred within the opening, and Jameson stepped back, realising that it hadn't been such a good idea to go exploring on his own. His feet caught on one of the roots that mapped the floor, and he fell down to the ground, watching in horror as a pale bony digit crept over the lip of the ovoid. Another followed, then another; eight claws fanned out across the ridge of the fleshy grey vase, quivering in anticipation.

With a piercing screech, the pale enlarged arachnid hurled itself forwards, claws digging into the back of Jameson's head and a thick, fleshy tube pressing against his lips as the creature pressed its clammy body against his face. He could feel his face tingle and burn slightly, opened his lips to scream in terror and panic, and felt his teeth being prised open as a thick and slime-covered extremity rolled down his throat. He could feel himself gagging, heaving as the uncoiled proboscis hardened in his throat. He tore violently at the soft shell-like back of the animal, his fingernails breaking the flesh and coming away with an acidic residue on them, smouldering and smoking as he finally stopped flopping around, unable to resist the suffocating lull of the parasite.

While the engineer lay comatose on the ground, the silent and hulking shape of the ebony queen alien watched over the dawning of her new brood.


	3. Chapter 2

II

Michael Collins sat at the desk of the senior engineer office, frowning at the report he currently held in his hands while nervously chewing on his lip. He could feel the sweat beading on his forehead and trickling down the nape of his neck. He nervously dabbed his balding forehead with the back of his sleeve and warily eyes the Marine that sat opposite him. Wearing full battle dress of a khaki overall with toughened armour plates over his calves, torso and shoulders, Corporal Richard Stevens sat holding a copy of the same report in one hand and a thinly-rolled cigarette in his other. His helmet sat on the table beside him, a battered packet of cigarettes tucked into a red piece of cloth wrapped around it. Two cards were fastened to the helmet on either side of the cigarette packet, a joker and a king of hearts, though the picture had been doctored and a white line added over the heart, indicating that he was the self'-proclaimed king of broken hearts.

"It says here that Jameson went into the lower engineering levels two days ago," he said, summarising the lengthy report without even reading it: his eyes remained fixed on the nervous engineer.

"Subjective ship time," Collins interjected. Stevens chose to ignore him.

"Sent to investigate a fault that one of the night staff on the bridge showed up as an error in the automated logs, an air lock malfunction?"

"That's right. I think it was JT on duty, him and that Indian he tends to hang around with."

"Tomly and Redhorn," Stevens muttered, nodding his head in agreement. "I read their reports, too. The thing I don't fully understand, is that you sent a relatively new engineer into the depths of the ship, which is like a maze, on his own?"

"That's right," Collins muttered, looking at the desk he sat at. His mouth was parched, and he would have given anything for the young Marine to leave the office so he could unlock the draw and pour himself a glass of vodka. Drinking on duty was a cardinal sin aboard the ship, and he didn't want to get in any more hot water than he already was, but a splash of chilled vodka would certainly help him unwind. Hell, maybe even a stint in the brig would let him do that, but it wouldn't look good on his career sheet.

"And he hasn't been seen since?"

"We thought that he'd just gone back to his quarters once the shift finished. You know what they're like down here in Engineering, the union rules down here, we have to go through so many channels and layers of red tape just to give them a five minute early finish; I'm sure you guys know about the union, right?"

"We're on duty every hour of every day. We don't have a union," Stevens said coldly, his eyes half-closed as he glared at him.

" Of course. Anyway, once he didn't turn up…"

"You filed your report, and the rest's history," Stevens said, kicking his feet up onto the metal desk and leaning back in the seat. Collins looked uneasily at the battered greaves the marine wore on his calves, trying to mentally count the tally marks that covered the clamshells. He had a white 'L' painted on the right greave, and the letter 'R' painted on the left. Collins had to fight back the sneer he could feel creeping across his lips at the man's inane sense of humour; the Marine was probably considered the wittiest soldier in the barracks. "Tell me again why only one person was sent down into the… what do you guys call it – the inferno?"

"It was late night," Collins said, shaking his head. "We operate on a skeleton crew then, minimal staff coverage while the rest of the ship sleeps."

"Not the rest: marines are on duty every hour of every day," Stevens said, repeating himself. Collins smiled weakly. "Why on his own? Why didn't someone else accompany him? My understanding of shift rotas aboard ships like the _Eden _is that they always work in pairs. What happened with Jameson?"

"Someone reported sick, we hadn't got around to finding a replacement. We couldn't wait to find someone, the report from the bridge indicated that there was a potential atmosphere leak. We needed…"

"I'm hearing excuses, but no specific reason. If Jameson's lying underneath some pipe somewhere, or at the bottom of an exposed air shaft, it'll be your ass on the line, and you'll have to deal with the consequences."

Collins opened his mouth to protest, but Stevens raised his hand to silence him. "I hope you don't have a still set up down there in the depths of the engineering levels. If we find him lying drunk on the ground, I'll hold you responsible as shift supervisor, and make sure you spend the rest of your time on this ship cleaning out the sceptic tanks..."

Stevens stopped talking as he lifted his hand up to the radio headset he wore, cocking his head as he listened to the voice that spoke over the link. Collins could hear it without being attached to the link.

"They've found your boy," he finally announced, crumpling up the paper and tossing it onto the floor. "One of the search teams found him in the lower levels, crawling around on his hands and knees trying to make himself vomit. He sounds delirious, rambling about being attacked or assaulted. It's possible that one of the animals has escaped from one of the domes."

Stevens stood up and grabbed his helmet, placing it on his head and flicking the cigarette into his mouth, rolling it around his lips before clenching it in his teeth. "It's also possible your boy has an illegal still down there and spent the last two days mashed off his face. I'll keep a couple of men on the level we found him, try to find out what exactly happened. I'll also make sure a couple of men drop by to search the offices and quarters of all engineers. In the meantime, Jameson won't be in for a while until I get one of the doctors to check him out. As you were, citizen."

Stevens turned and strolled out the office, his hand resting against the butt of his sidearm as he marched away down the corridor, his head bobbing up and down as he spoke into his microphone. Collins grimaced as he caught a glimpse of the protective plate that protected the base of his spine and upper region of his buttocks: capital lettering that read 'fantastic' and another card pasted to the armour, this one an ace of spades.

"Fantastic ace?" grunted Collins to no one in particular as he pulled open his draw and grabbed the bottle of murky liquid he had hidden. He'd have to dispose of it, and the still he and some of the other engineers had set up around one of the engine coolant units. "Ace hole, more like it."

0

Doctor Evelyn Monroe sat at her desk in the ship's surgery, her delicate features bathed in the pale glow of a muted desk lamp as she hammered a keypad set into the desk, updating the record of the patients she had seen that day. The writings she worked on floated above the keyboard, and she rubbed her temples as she paused mid-sentence, trying to work out what to enter next into the system.

The door to the surgery hissed open and she spun around, the words of her report still lingering in her vision as the contact lenses she wore projected the image of the words over the scene before her.

Two Marines, each wearing their olive green armour and carrying weapons slung over their shoulders, guided a weary looking man into the infirmary. The man, naked from the waist up, had a red mark around the circumference of his neck, and eight pinpricks of blood around his face. His lips were pale, and he had a distant look in his eyes, as if he didn't know where he was. Evelyn switched off the console on her desk and grabbed a set of medical instruments, placing some in the pockets of her long white coat, some in her belt and others on one of the vacant wheeled gurneys. She didn't need to indicate to the soldiers as they lifted the man, placed him on the trolley and stepped back.

"What have we got?" she asked, grabbing the gurney by the handrails on one side and pushing it into one of the eight examination cubicles that lined the room.

"Jameson, an engineer been missing for a couple of days," announced one of the Marines as he followed her into the examination chamber. "We found him crawling around on his hands and knees in one of the lower levels, says he can't remember much but he claims he was attacked by an animal or a person. He thinks. Dealer thinks he's drunk."

"You said he was talking, what happened to him?"

"Must've went back under," suggested one of the Marines with a half-hearted shrug of his shoulders.

"And they don't tell you to keep an eye out for shock or anything like that?"

"They teach us to do what we're told, Doctor."

"Fine, fine," muttered Evelyn. She paused, then looked inquisitively at the more vocal Marine. "Who's Dealer?" with a frown, she wired the gurney up to a control panel and tapped a series of commands into keypad. The words that still floated in her vision faded away, and were replaced by a three-dimensional graphic representation of the skeletal structure of the man.

"Corporal Stevens, he plays a mean hand of cards," the second Marine responded, pulling a cigarette out from one of the pouches around his waist and flipping it into his open mouth. "He's in charge of the investigation."

Evelyn looked up from the body of the man, the scan of his skeleton still in her field of vision as she peered at the soldier, in particular the cigarette he was about to ignite. "Put that out, soldier. This is a sterile environment, and you know you can't smoke aboard this ship, anyway."

"I wasn't going to light it," protested the Marine, his lighter gripped in his hand as the flame hovering inches from his smoke.

"Do you need to stay here?"

"Dealer…. uh, Corporal Stevens says he needs a report on him, toxicology, blood sugar levels, the works. You're to give us the information we need, and we'll pass it on."

"Stay out of my way," she sighed, tapping notes into her hand-held computer screen. "It might take some time. You gentlemen want to take a seat?"

The two men grunted a wordless response, and one of them retired to the door, while the first stayed to watch. Evelyn tried her best to ignore him and worked around the delirious man, administering a mild sedative while continuously making notes.

"Is he okay?" the Marine finally asked.

"Skeleton seems okay," Evelyn finally announced, tapping the control pad beside the bed and watching as the views projected in her lenses cycled through the different layers of the patient: bone, skin, muscle, organs, and the circulatory system. "There's a small crack in his skull, like he fell against something hard, metallic. His teeth look they've been repositioned, forced open, his bridgework is all push in and rearranged. I don't know… if he was attacked, maybe he was hit in the face, a blunt, shaped object maybe like a wrench or a hammer. From the markings on his neck, it looks like he was strangled, the striations suggest maybe a cable or tubing or something, but these markings on his dermal layer suggests something like fingers have been wrapped around his head, like this," she said, placing the her wrists together and pointing her fingers towards the Marine, wiggling them in a loose impersonation of spider legs. She stopped and lowered her hands and returned to working the controls of the medical scanner. "Hold on, what's this?"

The soldier by the door, who had looked bored and unresponsive up to that point, perked up, taking a step into the room and motioning for the doctor to carry on. She didn't look up, didn't see him approach, but she continued anyway.

"The X-ray scans of his thorax looks like he's got a large blood clot in his chest, right here between his lungs. Like a fist…"

"Is that linked in to the attack?"

"Maybe it's not a clot," she said to herself, ignoring the Marine. "A tumour? Some kind of foreign body… I might have to operate."

"Doctor," the Marine snapped, eyeing Evelyn with a stone-cold stare. "In your professional opinion, was this man attacked?"

"By something, yes. I can't say what, maybe something's escaped from one of the domes."

"We have men searching the level we found him on now. If something's down there, they'll find it."

"Well they'd better be careful," Evelyn muttered as she retrieved a tray of sterilised surgical instruments from one of the storage cupboard and set them down beside the man. She grabbed an auto-injector and pressed the needle tip of the device against the skin of the prone man, flushing his system with a sedative and anaesthetic. "Whoever of whatever did this to this man may still be lurking down there."

"We're Marines, ma'am," the Marine said with a smug toothy grin, flashing teeth yellowed by tobacco and coffee. "We can handle ourselves."

"I'm sure you can," Evelyn muttered, adjusting the control panels in front of her before collecting a tray of sterilised instruments. "Just keep out my way while I look at his injuries, In fact, just keep out the room, I need the place to be sterile and your filthy uniform and weapon isn't going to help me keep my medical licence. You may not need any damn licence to kill someone, but I need one to save someone."

"Corporal Steven told us to…"

Evelyn sighed, feeling her stress levels rise as she tried to deal with the comatose patient. She folded her arms across her chest and furrowed her brow. "When I've got something to report, I'll submit my report directly to him."

"But…"

"I'll let him know, uh," Evelyn squinted to peer through the holograms that still floated before her vision and read the nametag embroidered on the lapel of his jump suit. "Jules. I'll let him know that Private Jules was a perfect example of Marine chivalry and dedicated to his job. How does that sound?"

"Okay," sighed the Marine, shaking his head. "Okay, but we'll wait outside. You know, in case whoever did this comes back to finish the job. If I did this to someone, I'd come back and finish the job to make sure they didn't point the finger."

"Wonderful," Evelyn murmured, making a note of the patient's vitals.


	4. Chapter 3

III

"Graveyard shift again," murmured JT, glaring at the dimmed monitor before him and nursing a plastic disposable cup filled with the tar-like tepid coffee. He still wasn't a captain, and he still despised the late shift.

"Graveyard shift's ideal for the deadbeats, right?" grunted Naki, his feet up on the control desk and rolling them from side to side on the balls of his feet, tapping the toes of each boot together. He peeled back a sheet from the notebook he carried, crumpled it up and tossed it through the air. He watched with a simple grin as the projectile sailed through the air and bounced off the rim of the metal bucket he'd brought with him to his shift. It toppled to the floor and lay amongst the pile of other paper balls lying on the deck plate. "It wouldn't be so bad if they paid us more, unsociable hours and all, but shit…"

"I know," JT nodded. "We get paid the same as the people who work nine to five. Where's the fuckin' justice in that?"

"Amen," Naki grinned, crumpling his own coffee cup into a misshapen disc and launching it across the room. It sailed across the room, skimmed over the bucket, and crashed into the wall, spilling a few droplets of dark brown liquid on the bulkhead. "Boring as shit, but if we try to bring something to keep us entertained, we get pulled up on a disciplinary and get some of our pay docked."

"Well, hacking into the security cams in one of the women's locker rooms is a little different to bringing a book along to a shift."

"But it's so damn boring," Naki repeated, pulling himself up and strolling around the room, idly flicking random switches and buttons as he strutted around the bridge. "The last thing that happened that was vaguely interesting was that glitch with the airlock the other day."

"You heard what happened with that, right?" JT asked, leaning forward and looking into the dark contents of his cup as if trying to read the future in a crystal ball. "With the engineer going missing."

"I heard he camped out in the belly of the ship and got pissed out of his face on an illegal still he set up," Naki grumbled. "Lucky bastard."

"Yeah? Well I heard he got attacked."

"Attacked," scoffed the Indian. "Who the fuck's going to hide in the engineer deck they call 'the inferno', and attack someone?"

"Not 'who', but 'what'," JT shook his head. "They think one of the animals escaped from the domes."

"Fuck me," groaned Naki, throwing himself into another seat. In one shift, he normally sat in every seat on the bridge for at least ten minutes, and tonight was going to be no exception. "That's all we need, some frigging rat running around the air shafts. And it's not rats and mice we're carrying: there's some nasty shit in those hydro domes. Monkeys, wild cats, fucking _sharks_…"

"I hardly think a shark's going to break out of the water tanks and stalk the engineering crew," JT rolled his eyes.

"Stranger shit's happened," Naki warned, wagging his finger. "Mark my words."

"Anyway, they say the marks on the poor bastard looked like someone had tried to have a right go at him. Strangled, they say."

"They?" Naki raised an eyebrow. "You mean _she_, as in Doctor Monroe. Still trying to fuck around with her?"

"She's a friend," JT assured him. "I used to hang around with her brother before he was shipped out to Styx on some Marine mission, I promised I'd look after her, and he never came back, died on the mission: I owe it to him. Anyway, yes, Evelyn said he looked like he'd been strangled, maybe with a piece of wiring. Lucky the bastard wasn't garrotted."

"And you don't feel guilty that it was us that picked up the fault and sent them out him to get beaten up?"

"No, because we just picked out the fault, the engineering chief sent him out on his own, and from what I hear, the Corporal's going ape shit on that poor bastard. He's convinced it was his fault."

"That's the shit that happens here," Naki smiled, fishing around in his pockets and dumping the contents of them on the desk. He sifted through the fluff and dirt, picking out a sealed tube of tobacco and a roll of thin white paper and started to roll himself some cigarettes. "You're trapped in a metal box for, what, how long, months; maybe a year? You're bound to loose it at one point or another; it's just a case of who freaks out first. In this case it was the psycho stalking the engineering decks, followed closely by the crackpot Marine who spends too much time getting high on gun cleaner."

"Some would say you cracked a long time ago," grinned JT, helping himself to one of the freshly rolled cigarettes and tucking it behind his ear.

"Well, when you and your Grampa spend every Sunday afternoon shacked up in a sweat lodge with a pound of hallucinogenic drugs for seven years, something's bound to stop working up here," Naki grunted, tapping the side of his head with a finger. "But the drugs stopped me from going crazy. Now I'm just lazy as shit. One thirty systems check, what's the status?"

"Everything's the same," JT muttered. "Power, atmo, pressure. Nothing new, it's all okay. We got word back from _The Babylon _and _Gaia_; their systems are fine. Whatever malfunctioned with our airlock's a one-off; it hasn't been repeated over there. What about your boards?"

"Everything's fine: we've got reports of missing primates from one of the hydroponics domes coming in, some family that of monkeys that haven't been seen for a couple of days, we'll let the animal handlers worry about that... You see, that makes sense: monkeys go missing, and around the same time some poor bastard is found beaten down by an escaped animal. Problem solved, get me the Captain, I should have his job. There's a com light flashing, too, an incoming transmission from one of the medical bays. Other than that, it's all normal."

"Transmission from _where_? Open the channel!"

"Ay, sir," saluted Naki, running his fingers over the board and activating the communication systems, putting on a fake voice. "This is the graveyard shift with Tomly and Redhorn, taking requests and dedications for all our listeners. What's your name and where are you calling from?"

Static hissed over the speakers hidden in the console JT sat at, a steady rhythmic whisper of silence punctuated by the slightest of a shuddering breath.

"Hello?" JT said, leaning towards the microphone on the desk. "Is there someone there?"

"T… Tomly?" a horse voice, quiet and subdued, almost afraid to be heard. "John, is that you?"

"Evelyn?" he asked, leaning further forwards in the seat and tapping at the controls to see if he could increase the signal and isolate her voice from the fizzing background noise. "Evie, is that you?"

"Johnny… Christ, I need you!"

"Fuck, JT," Naki bellowed, slapping the console before him with the palm of a wide hand and shaking his head, a grin plastered on his face. "You always screw your friends' sisters? I've got a sister back on Earth, have you fucked her?"

JT scowled at his friend, making short, sharp gestures with his hands to indicate he should be quiet. "Evie, it's me, what's wrong?"

"Help me," she whispered pitifully. "Christ… please…"

A clatter sounded in the background, the sound of a metal tray dropping to the floor and instruments scattering across the deck, followed by a screech, then the transmission abruptly cut off. JT jumped to his feet and pulled on the red leather jacket draped over the back of his chair, then grabbed his cap and pulled it on over his head as he stormed towards the door.

"Where you going?"

"Medical," JT snapped, pausing at the door and hammering a code into the keypad by the door. It cycled open slowly, allowing him access to the corridor outside. "Jameson's still down there, doped up to the eyeballs. If the psycho that beat the shit out him's gone to finish the job off, she could be in trouble, I have to get to her."

"Call the Marines, that's what the bastards get paid for. We fly, they shoot and risk their lives. I wouldn't expect them to fly this ship, why should they expect us to be brave?"

"Because sometimes you have to take the initiative," muttered JT as he stepped out into the corridor and hammered the button behind him to seal the door.

"Fine" Naki responded as he slipped a plastic pouch out from the inside of his jacket and took a sip of the dark yellow liquid that sloshed around inside the small bag. Smacking his lips as the cooled, and illegal, whiskey trickled down his throat, he lay back in the seat he occupied and looked over the few controls he decided to monitor while he decided whether he should contact the Marines.

"Fuck it," he finally decided, replacing the malleable hip flask back into his inside pocket and patting it reassuringly. In the eternity he'd spent watching over the ship, the only exciting thing that had ever happened had been the airlock malfunction, and what were the chances, _really_, of that happening again?

"Chase that skirt all you want," he sighed, grabbing a datapad and idly flicking through the real-time updates that were coming in from around the ship. There seemed to be a lot of minor failures and errors cropping up around the ship, little system faults and bugs that needed to be fixed, but by no means were dangerous or threatening to the wellbeing of the ship or its crew. He reluctantly tapped through a series of menus, sorting through the reports and passing them on to the areas on board that would deal with the fixes.

Though the job was by no means taxing, Naki quickly lost interest in it and found himself logging into the security systems under an alias to see if any of the sub-programs he'd input to hack the security cameras in the locker rooms were still active. He grinned wickedly to himself as one of the small monitors beside his chair sparked to life and depicted a small room lined on each side by metallic doors, each with a small keypad embedded into the front. A woman strolled into view, a young redhead with her hair tied back in a tight ponytail and a thick white towel wrapped around her body. She seemed preoccupied as she paced up and down the locker room, talking impatiently into a small headset still wrapped around her head: she was obviously one of the higher ranking officers on board who felt they could never be more than five minutes away from their work. He couldn't hear any of the sound, nor could he muster up any three dimensional images: voyeurism had its limits if he didn't want to be caught by the systems.

In mid conversation, the woman seemed to lose her temper and flung both her hands out while spreading her fingers in a gesture Naki used himself, normally while uttering the words "what the fuck?" and from the annoyed expression on the woman's face, he could tell that she was in the same frame of mind. She tore off her radio and threw it unceremoniously into her locker, let her towel drop to the ground, and started to head towards the door at the back of the room, that lead to the showers. Naki smiled to himself as he watched the naked, supple form of the woman move, found himself grinning even more as she spun on her heels and her breasts bounced from side to side. She seemed to be staring straight at Naki, and he found himself recoiling from the monitor, before remembering that it wasn't a two-way transmission, and something else close to the camera had obviously startled her: maybe one of the escaped monkeys had found its way into the changing rooms.

Naki smiled as he was briefly reminded of an old tri-dee video he'd seen once that had involved a naked woman and monkey, but knew that there was no way he was going to get a live sample of bestiality right now. Still, he was interested to see what would happen next: would the woman retrieve her towel first, before attempting to catch the monkey, or would she just try to scare it away? So many possibilities, though all he thought didn't match with what actually happened.

A pale shape slithered in front of the camera, a sickly yellow-orange, glistening hide that slipped in front of the lens and sickly reflected the artificial lights of the room, a shape that seemed to taper off into a thin tail as it dropped from what must have been a ventilation shaft near the camera onto the ground: the woman followed it with her head and tried to back away from it, stumbling over her towel and finding herself wrapped up in it, spinning around and falling to the ground, her head bouncing sickeningly off the lockers as she lost her balance and crashed to the floor. Naki watched as something slithered across the floor, some kind of mutant snake being the best way he could describe it, and latched on to the exposed buttocks of the woman, chewing on the fatty tissue with small, sharp teeth. He felt sick, but found himself unable to tear his gaze away from the feasting animal, slapping blindly at the controls around him and trying to find the controls to open a communication channel. The system chirped to life and a rough voice broke the stunned silence that had fallen over the bridge.

"Security," the man grunted. He sounded just as board and reticent as Naki had been before hacking the security system.

"Yeah, hey, uh…" Naki started to speak, but tailed off as the truth behind what he was about to say dawned on him. If he was going to report this in, he was going to have to do it tactfully: if he just announced he'd seen it on the security cameras, questions would be raised; why was a part-time pilot and technician reporting on events he'd seen on a restricted feed? A pilot-cum-technician who had been reduced to the graveyard shift for just the same type of illicit behaviour only a couple of months before? As distressing and disturbing as it all was, he couldn't let himself fall any further from grace. His Grampa may have been a crack addict, but he came out with some gems in his years, and one of them was that you always had to look out for number one.

"Look, buddy, what's wrong? You're wasting my time."

"I… uh… There's been a couple of sightings around deck 4, section 8S, some people claiming they're seeing something like a snake loose in the corridors and around the gym area. Have you heard anything strange?"

"Nothing's been reported to Security. They normally report things like that to us direct, not the bridge."

"Yeah, I know, but…"

"Look, you sit up there and don't press anything, we'll worry about the little beasties escaping from the domes, you worry about doing your job and keep pointing us straight ahead."

"Listen, asshole," shouted Naki as he finally snapped, "There's some kind of fucking snake eating some women in one of the locker rooms. Why don't you do _your_ job and get off your asses and find that woman?"

There was no response from the other side, indicating that the line had gone dead. Naki glared sullenly at the screen, and the snake that had now chewed through most of the flesh of the woman's buttock and now seemed to be worming its way into the inner cavity of her torso.

"Hell with this shit," he grunted, standing up and lurching for the doorway before punching in the code to release him from the bridge. "Sometimes you just gotta take the fuckin' initiative."


	5. Chapter 4

IV

JT piled into his living quarters, his breath catching in his convulsing throat and his heart pounding against the inside of his ribcage. Dropping to the floor by his low bed, he pushed aside the discarded clothing that lay scattered around and dragged out a heavy-set metal chest with a numeric lock on the top. He stabbed in the combination for the lock and heaved the hinged lid back, hastily grabbing the leather holster coiled up in the case and wrapping it around his wais and leg, then snapped up the heavy pistol and slipped it into the cradle for the weapon. He pocketed the three clips of ammunition before spinning around and bolting out his room, not bothering to stop and seal up the room behind him.

His room had been on the way to the medical bay, more or less, but there was still close to a mile and a half of corridors to negotiate before he would arrive at his target, and he hoped he wasn't going to be too late.

Too late for what, he wasn't exactly sure, but he knew something was wrong. Evelyn wasn't the type of girl to loose her head and freak out at nothing.

_Only she wasn't a girl now, she was a woman._

JT had spent more than ten years hanging with Peter Monroe before he had decided to join the Marines. While JT excelled in mathematics and astronavigation during his college years, Pete had been a more physical person, and it was obvious that the two men were going to branch out in different directions when it came to careers. With the two being so different, they often helped one another out to strengthen their weak spots, and while JT passed on a modicum of his knowledge of figures, Pete had taken some time out to show him the finer points of firing a weapon.

It was a bright, sunny day on the plains behind the city where they'd gathered the day before Pete shipped out to boot camp, and he'd brought his younger sister, Evelyn, to their homemade target range to practice. Pete had complained about bringing her with him, but JT didn't mind: though there was a five year age gap, by the time JT had reached the age of twenty three, Evelyn had matured from the annoying eight year old girl that used to annoy this living shit out of him, into a beautiful young woman that he admired from afar: after all, he couldn't hit on his best friend's sister, or someone who he considered to be one of his closest friends.

"Okay, I'm shipping out tomorrow," Pete said, slamming a heavy green case onto the ground at the feet of the three people. "Which mean's ol' Smelly Pete ain't always going to be around to drag your ass out of trouble, Johnny, or keep the lowlifes away from you, Evie."

Evelyn smiled as he used the nickname she'd been calling him since she was eight, a grin that seemed to warm JT as he watched, and he had to look away, feeling his skin flush as a number of inappropriate thoughts flashed through his mind, and not for the first time in the past couple of months.

"So, I've got a few presents for you. Call it a leaving present, if you will. Evie, you know I love you, but you always seem to attract the wrong type of guys: what Mom would've called uncouth, what I'd call fuckheads, though not in the presence of ladies, of course. Think of this as a form of birth control; I'm too young to be an uncle."

He opened the box and pulled out a compact pistol, a metallic black in colour with white engraved handles. Pete beamed with pride as he presented it to his little sister. She took it and felt the weight, bouncing it carefully with one hand.

"Now I know you're training to be a doctor and you're all about saving lives, but shit can get rough, and when it does, you know you need to be able to take care of yourself. You know how to use it?"

"I quess that's why we're here."

"Damn right," said Pete, hauling out a larger handgun and passing it over to JT. "You need to be able to take care of yourself in this world."

Hours passed as the trio worked on their gun skills, practicing on a variety of targets placed at strategic places around their improvised range, As the sun lowered over the mountain ranges to the west, Evelyn lowered her weapon and handed it back to her brother.

"I got classes early in the morning, I need to go. Bye Pete," she murmured, kissing him on the cheek, then doing the same to JT. "Bye Johnny."

"Keep the gun, it's for you."

With a smile and nod she left, tucking the weapon and what ammunition was left into her holdall before clambering aboard her pushbike and riding off into the nearby town.

"That's my little sister," Pete said, nodding towards her. "She's all I've got in the way of family, 'cept you. Make me a promise, Johnny. Look after her."

"I'll try," JT nodded.

"And keep your hands off her."

The memory of that day faded away as JT found himself at the entrance to the sick bay he knew Evelyn would be working in, though was distressed to see that there wasn't any lights on inside: nor were there any guards stationed by the door. What if Naki had been right, and the psycho who had assaulted the engineer had come to finish the job? Since knowing him, Naki had never been right, at least that JT could remember, but he was sure there was a first time for everything. With his hand resting on the butt of the weapon that lay heavily against his thigh, JT carefully tapped the cycle button for the door open and stepped inside,

His initial assessment of the room, from the outside, had been incorrect. While none of the main lights were on, a few dim blue tubes running the length of the walls still cast their sickly pale light across the chaotic disarray of the room. Tools and trays littered the floor, scattered like the pieces of a jigsaw that didn't make any sense. A handful of gurneys had been cast to one side, making the maze of discarded equipment even harder to navigate as he picked his way towards the only other figure that seemed to occupy the room: a body lying prone on the furthest table, a sheet draped over it. He stepped closer, wincing as his foot hooked on the handle of a blood-spattered bone saw and skidded across the floor, the sound of the blade scraping against the metallic deck plates and the crash of the metal as it slammed into the wall a startling contrast to the deathly silence than loomed ominously in the air. He clenched his teeth and half-closed his eyes, hissing softly to himself and wishing that hadn't happened.

The figure on the table hadn't moved, hadn't flinched at the sudden sound.

JT stepped cautiously forwards, tentatively reached out and took hold of one of the corners of the sheet draped over the person, then yanked it off in one swift movement.

The stench of fresh blood, faecal matter and raw meat assailed his nostrils as the cloth swept back, revealing the carcass of a man lying on his back, the ribcage torn open in a misshapen hole in the centre of his torso, revealing a dark and gory chasm filled with tepid blood and organs that had been pushed aside. The expression on the man was that of sheer terror and agony, a rictus gape permanently fixed on his face through the tightened muscles of rigor mortis. JT felt his gorge raise in the back of his throat, swallowed hard to press back the thick, half-digested acidic food, then quickly drew the heavy pistol, cupping it in both hands and keeping the muzzle of the weapon pointed towards the ceiling, slowly circling and searching every corner of the dark room for a hint as to what had happened, who had done this, and whether they were still in the room.

Something made a noise from within a large storage cupboard by the doorway, and it suddenly occurred to JT that someone emptying the contents of a cupboard could have made the mess on the floor in order to clean out a suitable hiding space. Levelling off his weapon on the large doors of the cupboard and gently touching the trigger so a glowing, pale blue laser dot appeared on the door, he cleared his throat and steeled himself for confrontation.

"C… come out!" he demanded. The noise came again by way of an answer, and the door rattled slightly: the sound of a lock being unfastened before the doors burst open and a figure shrouded in darkness burst out the cupboard, an unholy scream tearing through the still of the room as the creature stumbled across the rubbish-strewn floor and dived onto JT, sending his weapon skittering across the floor.

0

Naki found himself standing outside the locker room he'd previously been watching, the door shut tight and a piece of metal piping he'd managed to grab on the way gripped tight in his sweating palm. Licking his lips and nervously adjusting his clothing, he reached out to the controls for the door, hesitating before reluctantly keying the lock for the door. It didn't respond, and he tried again using an override code he knew worked on most doors.

With no joy, he pressed the flat, tapered end of the pipe he held into the seal between the door, twisted it, then worked his fingers into the crack and peeled the door open, his arms quivering and shaking as he fought the resisting motors for the doors. With a final hiss, the restraints gave way and Naki stumbled into the room, gagging at the stench of warm meat on the verge of decay and the cloying humidity that seemed to press in around him as he entered the room. Lockers stood on either side of hi, curving off to the left where they continued towards the showers, and the place he knew the body of the woman would be.

Carefully rolling each footstep to make as little noise as possible, he crept through the locker room, finally peering around the corner and finding the carcass of the woman, with almost the entire length of the body covered in bites or stripped of flesh entirely. Bone gleamed dully from beneath matted clumps of hair and tattered muscle tissue, entrails smeared across the floor and up the sides of the surrounding lockers, and a thick, slimy trail of blood and pieces of discarded organs coated the floor between the body and the showers. Thick bellowing clouds of steam drifted out from the obscured alcove the showers resided in, the constant drumming of the water the only sound he could hear, and Naki carefully navigated around the body and hammered the control panel embedded on the wall, hitting the cut-off for the water pipes and killing the shower. The constant torrent of water instantly died into nothing more than a rhythmic drip, and Naki lowered his weight onto one of the wooden benches, staring grimly at the dismembered corpse.

He clearly hadn't thought this through, but then, Naki had a reputation for acting on impulse without weighing up the consequences: the string of one-night stands and affairs he'd had were a testament to that. He'd tried to warn the security forces and they hadn't been interested, and now how was he going to explain finding a half-eaten woman in the _female _locker room, on the other side of the ship from where he was supposed to be on duty?

"You're a fucking genius, Redhorn," he scorned himself, turning his gaze from the body to the corner of the room where the camera sat, and the opened air vent above it. The grille looked like a chemical had burnt it through, the edges still seemed to smoulder a little, and a caustic yellow haze lingered around the opening. The camera seemed to be suffering from damage by the same compound, as it too looked to have received a spray of acidic chemicals, and the red power light was dead.

"Snake did this?" he wondered, slowly making his way over to the damaged corner of the room and grabbing a handful of pens from his pocket: he flicked through them, making sure he wasn't about to sacrifice one of his porno-pens, and prodded the damaged metal. The plastic tube came away smouldering with the same gaseous discharge the grille had, and he dropped it to the ground, not wanting to get any of the corrosive material on him while the pen slowly dissolved before his eyes.

"Some kind of man-eating acid-spraying snake," he murmured, eyeing the communication headset the woman had been using moments before the attack. He scooped it up and slipped it over his ear, wiping the traces of blood he'd picked up on his trousers. He tried to tune the unit into a communication channel, but they all seemed unavailable.

"Hell of a time to be engaged," he rumbled, slipping the unit into his pocket. He still hadn't decided what to do next, but the sound of something clicking against the tiles in the shower grabbed his attention. Had the killer snake been coiled in the shower, lulled into a sleep by the warm, steamy atmosphere? If that had been the case, Naki turning off the showers had could have pulled it out of it's hibernation.

_Ain't no way I'm going to wind up as snake bait,_ he thought to himself, prying open the closest locker and rummaging through the contents: though there was nothing that looked like a weapon, a large pressurised tin of deodorant would serve his purposes if he combined it with his lighter. After all, all wild animals feared fire… right?

With the spray in one hand and his flickering lighter in the other, Naki slowly approached the entrance to the showers and rolled around the corner. He had expected to see the snake, coiled up and ready to strike: he was more than surprised.

The creature he was looking at may have once been the snake, but now it seemed to be in the middle of some kind of transformation. He knew caterpillars changed into butterflies, and tadpoles into frogs, but he didn't think snakes went through the same types of change into anything else.

A darker shade of the sickly orange it had previously been, the small needle-like teeth were growing into larger versions as he watched, a grinning maw filled with incisors and fangs, an impossible number of perfect ivory blades dripping with thick, viscous saliva. A head was slowly forming, an elongated skull rising up from expanding shoulders, and stubby, malformed arms slowly stretching out from the distended torso bristling with rapidly expanding ribs. Its tail, covered with ridges and tipped with a fine blade-like protrusion made from cartilage, uncoiled from around its girth and lazily flicked out across the deck. Upon seeing him, or at least sensing him, for there were no visible eyes, ears or nostrils on the beast, the cavernous maw opened with an almost silent hiss, clearly a warning to Naki, and a warning he was more than willing to take heed of. Dropping the aerosol and lighter with a clatter, he spun on his heels and lurched out the showers, rushing back into the main locker room and losing his balance as he slipped on a pool of blood.

He tumbled to the ground, throwing his hands out to keep his balance and grimacing in disgust as one hand sunk into the opened cavity of the dead woman, bony links snapping and cracking as his weight proved too much and sunk into the fetid interior of the corpse. In a fit of panic, he rolled over and tried to haul himself to his feet. His hands and feet slipped as they tried to find some form of purchase in the gore-streaked room. He couldn't hear the deformed hybrid following him, though he couldn't think what it was hybridised between: it was unlike any animal he'd ever seen before. With his head swimming and his limbs numb, he hauled himself up onto one of the benches and pressed his body back against the closed lockers, his eyes fixed on the opening he'd just escaped from. He hauled himself to his feet and made a desperate, last-ditch attempt to lurch over to the exit, but his legs were like jelly and he toppled to the floor once more, landing heavily on the floor and knocking the wind from him. As he struggled to draw breath, he felt his head swimming as he teetered on the brink of unconsciousness and sensed a presence looming over him. Something wet and cold, like raw meat, pressed against his face and nipped at his lips, a cold liquid oozing into his throat…

Then the darkness consumed him.


	6. Chapter 5

V

JT tried to clamber to his feet and extricate himself from the humanoid figure that seemed intent on battering him with its fists; weak, feeble blows that didn't seem to have any force behind them. The protesting blows seemed to soften and slow down, and the inhuman scream that had first accompanied the barrage of blows seemed to stop, turning into muffled sobs as the person buried their face into his chest. The tense muscles of the body seemed to relax, and JT found himself melting into an embrace of the young woman that hat emerged from the cupboard. For a moment he held her, comforting and reassuring her while being surrounded by the death, destruction and chaos that had consumed the medical bay. The sobbing slowly ebbed away, and JT found himself soothing the young doctor with gentle shushing and whispers, stroking the back of her head and neck.

"It's okay," he promised, holding her close and savouring the scent of her sweat: even in the midst of the apparent violence, he could barely contain his feelings towards her. "It's okay, Evie, it's all right. Can you tell me what happened?"

Evelyn nodded, tried to speak, but nothing but incoherent rambling and mutterings seemed to spill out of her mouth, warnings of a mutant snake that had tried to attack her. He shook his head and slowly guided her to one of the upright gurneys, making her take a seat on it but making sure her back was turned to the eviscerated body. He looked over the pale features of the young woman, at the vermilion splash that had splashed across her face and started to dry on her features. Though she was now twenty-four, she still reminded him of that eighteen year old that had been on the field with him and Pete the day before he shipped out. Soft and delicate features, ice blue eyes hidden behind a spread of thick lashes, and small, almost elf-like ears. He thin lips seemed to continue to move as if speaking, though nothing seemed to be coming out of her mouth.

"Was there anyone else here?" JT asked, taking one of Evelyn's hands in one of his own, then fumbling for his communications headset with the other. "Other doctors, orderlies, guards for the… anyone else?"

"Mu… Marines," she finally murmured, wiping at her eyes with the back of her sleeve and slowly nodding. "Tu… Two marines."

"Where did they go?" JT asked, trying to take things slowly and ask one question at a time, despite the wealth of questions that seemed to be bubbling over in the back of his mind. "Did they go for help?"

"Dead," Evelyn muttered. "Dead."

_Dead_, JT though to himself, trying without success to link his headset into the ship's communication network. _Where're the bodies?_

He knew he hadn't verbalised his thought, but Evelyn offered the answer anyway, her eyes seeming to stare through him as she spoke.

"They took the bodies. In there," she said, lifting a pale and shaking hand to point at one of the opened air vent in the ceiling. JT hadn't noticed it until it had been pointed out.

"Who are they? Who did this?"

"Serpents," she hissed as she jerked forwards and wrapped both her hands around JT's wrists. Her fingernails bit into his skin, drawing fresh blood as she held tightly to him, as if he were trying to escape her grip. "Demons, monsters, dragons…"

"I can't get through," JT sighed, slipping the comset back into his pocket and looking back over his shoulder, "Hopefully Naki did the right thing and reported this in." He eyed his weapon lying dormant on the ground and moved to get it, but Evelyn attacked his arm with renewed vigour, drawing him closer than before.

"Don't go," she pleaded. "Please."

He motioned to the weapon slowly, indicating he was only moving a couple of feet to retrieve it, and she reluctantly let go, nodding for him to collect but not taking her eyes off him. Coiling his fingers around the butt of the weapon, JT grabbed the discarded pistol and warily eyed the open ventilation duct, expecting one of the creatures Evelyn had half-heartedly described to him to emerge. He fumbled with the heavy pistol, adjusting his grip on the weapon and squeezing the trigger, not enough to fire off a round but just enough to bring the blue laser target back into existence. The dim glow of the target didn't reveal a great deal in the blackness of the shaft, and he slowly stepped closer to the opening, trying to get a closer look.

A pair of cold hands wrapped around his neck and pulled him backwards, crashing into an upturned gurney and tumbling back to the floor. He craned his head around, glaring at the figure that clung to his back, and scowled.

"Damn it, Evie, quit fuckin' around."

She didn't say anything, simply shook her head and motioned towards the shaft, her eyes wide in terror, transfixed on the opening. JT was about to carry on with the scolding when the sound of dripping liquid caught his attention. He pulled himself back to his feet and looked at the floor beneath the opening in the ceiling, at the pile of thick, gelatinous liquid that was quickly pooling there.

"What the hell is that?" he murmured, shuffling towards the pool, but stopping short of the puddle when the sound of dripping liquid was twinned by gentle, hissing sound from above.

"Serpent," Evelyn muttered, stepping back towards the open door and retreating back to the main corridor and pleading: "C'mon, out here… Johnny, now."

Curiosity got the better of JT as he refused to move, watching in awe as the snake living in the duct slowly lowered itself into view, tail first. Uncoiling itself, the muscular length of the creature was covered in black bony ridges, its hide glistening wetly in the wildly flickering light as it dropped slowly to the ground. The razor sharp tip of the tail clattered to the ground, and the rest of the creature dropped down to the deck plate, landing in the thick puddle.

Evelyn's description of the creature as a serpent was off the mark: her use of the words 'monster' and 'demon' seemed much closer to the truth.

Resembling a humanoid insect-like creature, the creature crouched on the ground and continued to his, the dark talons on each foot clicking on the deck plates as it flexed its stubby toes. It tensed its body as it assessed the surroundings, its lithe figure rippling with power as it noticed JT and poised itself, ready to make its move. Each of its hands had six fingers; talons tipped with black claws that looked as though they could tear through the very metal they rested upon. Four tubes extended from the back of the creature, distended features that only added to the inhuman appearance of the creature, but no more than its head: elongated and cylindrical, the front of the creature's skull was covered and protected by a thick opaque membrane, while the sides of it were ridged. Small spines ran along the centre of the stretched cranium, though there were no visible signs of any sensory organs: the head lacked ears, eyes and nostrils, though the size of its mouth suggested that it certainly still had the benefit of the sense of taste. A maw filled with an impossible number of over-sized, needle-sharp teeth eased open and unleashed another load of the same gelatinous liquid onto the floor, an almost inaudible hiss, followed by the slow extension of the creatures tongue: square in shape, and tipped with a second set of teeth.

It tensed itself, and JT quickly brought his weapon up to bear on it, shaking off the trance the graceful movements of the alien creature had snapping off a single shot. The powerful round slapped into the front of the skull, denting the membrane and snapping its head to one side, but not causing any major damage to it. It lunged forwards just as JT unleashed a second shot, this time finding his mark on the outreaching hand of the advancing terror. The round struck its palm, decimated the flesh of the appendage and tore through the other side, the exiting projectile trailing with it a spray of glistening pale yellow liquid. The blood splashed on the decking, bubbling and releasing a choking grey smoke as the acidic liquid corroded through the metal it came into contact with.

The animal screamed, an inhuman noise that startled JT, stumbling backwards and spraying the caustic juices of its wound before lunging into another attack. JT shifted his aim, repositioned the blue laser dot on the membrane covering the front of its tubular, and squeezed off a pair of bullets; the first round smashed into the front of the head and made it turn to one side, just as the bullet had before, but this time the following projectile slammed into the exposed ridges on the side of its head, tearing through the monster's hide and splattering what organs resided in the elongated cranium across the wall behind it. Its screams turned into keening, high-pitched wails and it thrashed violently around and reached up, trying to haul itself back up into the air vents and escape from the confrontation. JT unleashed a salvo of gunshots, most of the rounds missing but a couple finding their mark on the limbs and ribbed torso of the creature. With a deafening howl it finally managed to retreat back into the darkness of the vent, its snake-like tail wavering from side to side before slipping back into the recess.

JT remained frozen in his firing stance; feet shoulder width apart and the smoking muzzle of his weapon pointing menacingly at the opening, anticipating the re-emergence of the shaft. Two minutes passed, and all that could be heard was the fizzing of the corrosive juices slowly eating through the bulkheads, the gentle sobs of Evelyn and his own ragged breathing. He slowly stepped away from the opening, navigating the fallen gurneys, and reached out, blindly taking Evelyn's hand in his own.

"C'mon, Evie, we're getting out of here."

0

JT and Evelyn stumbled into the main bridge, their journey conducted in silence and unmolested by neither man nor beast; it was still relatively early according to ship standard time, and shifts weren't due to change for another. Even if then had been spotted by any of the civilians aboard the ship during a shift swap, no one would have approached a doctor covered in blood and a second-class pilot lugging an oversized handgun around with him. There was such a thing as protocol, and trying to deal with things like this was best left for the marines aboard the colony settler.

Gasping for breath and feverishly hammering codes into the door control behind him, the door to the bridge cycled shut and locked behind JT, who slumped against the wall and slowly dropped down to the floor, bracing his legs against the opposite wall, while Evelyn watched him silently. Finally catching his breath, JT shouted out to his friend on watch.

"Naki… Jesus, Naki, get in touch with security, call out the marines, this is fucked up…"

"We're aware of how fucked up it is," answered an unfamiliar voice, cold and emotionless. JT had never spoken directly to Captain Marx, the main man in charge of the deep space colony settler, but he'd seen pictures of him all over the ship, in news bulletins and information updates. Blonde hair cropped close his scalp, small dark eyes set beneath a thick eyebrow that joined in the middle above his beak-like nose, and a mouth filled with yellowing teeth. He wasn't a particularly handsome captain, but he was efficient: this was translated by most of the crew as meaning he was a hard ass.

"Marx?" JT stammered, hauling himself to his feet and holstering his weapon.

"Captain Marx," he agreed. "Captain. Don't forget it."

"Where's Naki?"

"Don't worry about your redskin friend," Marx sat in the captains chair, the same chair JT had occupied more than an hour ago. He tapped at one of the keypads set into the armrest of the chair with an index finger, blindly tapping in the sequence of keys to activate one of the monitors on the control panels beside him. It blinked to life, displaying Naki, lying on a steel bench, stripped down to his undershirt and shorts, his hands chained together with a set of metal cuffs. Although he seemed to be breathing, he wasn't very responsive to his surroundings. "Redhorn's spending some time in the brig."

"What?" JT stepped forwards, confused at the turn of events. As he took a step towards the captain, he heard the ratcheting sound of two weapons being primed and brought about to bear on him: a pair of marines stood on either side of the recess leading to the entry point, each armed with a pulse rifle. JT immediately stopped his forward motion, raising his hands in a submissive gesture. One of the marines leaned forwards; his eyes trained on JT, he plucked the sidearm out his holster and slipped it into his own. "What's happened?"

"We've got details of the door activity on this bridge, you left here first, then your friend followed after about fifteen minutes after making a prank call to security about a snake missing. Next thing we know, one of the female crew members stumbles across your friend lying comatose on the floor of a locker room, surrounded by blood: no body. We've not been able to get anything out of him since finding him, he's completely unresponsive: but he's alive.

"Now, the blood was something of a mystery…" Marx stood up and glared at JT, then the cowering figure of Evelyn behind him. "It seems some of the pieces of the puzzle are coming together. A doctor covered in blood… a pilot with an unlicensed firearm… his friend, unconscious… I don't know what the fuck is happening here, Tomly, but this will not just disappear. Marine, get these two people in restraints and put them in the brig, I want an examination room prepared for interviews: take her coat, compare it to the blood found in the locker room, I want to see a match."

"Marx… Captain, you need to listen to us. There's something loose in the ship, a creature…"

"We're aware there are a number of primates loose on the ship," Marx continued, "I'm assured that these creatures…"

"It's not a fucking chimp," screamed JT. "I've seen it, it was in the medical room with Evie… Doctor Monroe, I mean, she seen it, too."

"Your girlfriend seems strangely quiet, Tomly, she's not backing you up at all!"

"She's not saying anything," JT snapped, "She's fucking petrified! Look at her!"

"Doctor Monroe is not the only doctor aboard the ship. I'll have another doctor stop by and assess her, _after _your friend's condition has been checked. Something's going on, Tomly, and by Christ, I won't stop until I get to the bottom of this. Take them away."

The pair of marines nodded and spun on their heels, one prodding JT in the stomach with the barrel of his weapon and the other motioning towards the door.

"You're making a big fucking mistake, Marx," JT called as the door cycled shut behind him. "A big fucking mistake!"

Marx sat in his chair in silence, shaking his head and sighing. It wasn't the first time he'd seen a crewmember loose it, but they normally just lost went mad: they didn't turn homicidal, and the fact the pilot had a firearm was _very_ worrying. Security was certainly not as tight as it should be, and that was something he'd address in the next staff meeting with the senior officers. He stifled a yawn with the back of his hand, looking at the chronometer mounted on his wrist. Was he destined to spend the next couple of hours on duty until the rota swapped, or would he be able to get away with summoning a couple of replacements?

Of course he could he was the captain: he could do pretty much what he wanted.

Reaching forwards, he thumbed a button to bring up a rota of replacement staff, then keyed in an ident number and activated the communications link: or at least tried to. When he hit the activation key, the speaker and microphone didn't respond. He tapped in the same code again and tried to establish a link once more, only to find the same thing happen again. Scowling, the tried the next person on the list, but got the same response yet again. Resigned to the fact that there was clearly a fault on his end, he hauled himself off the seat and dropped to his knees, pulling up one of the panels on the floor with a fluid movement and looking at the mass of wiring. Normally he would have called one of the technicians to come and fix the problem, but seeing as he couldn't contact anyone, he knew he'd have to deal with the problem himself. However, he knew the bridge like the back of his hand, and could fix most, if not all of the problems there, himself. He traced a thick bundle of wires through a junction box, then out the other side, where they ended in a charred lump of metal, where all the wires had fused together.

"Power surge," he muttered to himself, pulling a small knife out his pocket and starting to separate the wires as best he could. He knew he could fix it himself, it just meant he wasn't going to get cover for his unexpected duty.

"When I find out what happened, I'm going to nail all their asses to the wall," he grumbled, cutting the fused wires and stripping back the plastic coating. "Damn bastards. Fuck it!"

He flung his knife down to the floor, let go of the wires, and stood up, stretching his back out. Why was everything going to shit in his ship? The other colony settler ships were running find, not even one hiccup. Why was _The Eden _having such a spate of bad luck? Personnel going missing for days on end, technical glitches and faults all over, animals escaping the habitation domes, and now personnel flipping out? He sighed, opened his shirt pocket and slipped out a short cigar, lighting it up and taking a pull on it. Smoking was strictly prohibited, but he made the rules on the ship. If someone wanted to complain, who were they going to complain to? Out here in the depths of space, _he _was the law.

He sat back down in the chair, closed his eyes and savoured the cigar as he relaxed. It wasn't as good as the hand-rolled cigars he kept on his ranch on Earth, it was a vat-grown, processed piece of crap with all the bad stuff sucked out of it; but what was the point in that?

Lost in his thoughts and dead to the world, he didn't hear the covering to the air shaft behind one of the control panels slip to one side, didn't see the stealthy dark creature slink around outskirts of the room and poise itself behind the oblivious captain, nor did he scream when the tip of the creature's tail cracked through the air, ripped the skin of his chest like a knife blade, and flooded his system with a paralytic nerve agent.

He was unconscious when he was forced into the airshaft.

He didn't see the darkness engulf him.

Didn't hear his bones crack and snap as he was forced into the confined space.

Didn't feel his flesh split as his fractured bones ripped through his flesh...


	7. Chapter 6

VI

The brig was a small room, ten-foot square, and furnished with a metal bench on opposing sides of the cell. In one corner there sat a squat metallic chair with an aluminium cover, a basic waste unit linked in to a chemical flushing system that smelled a little off, with a basin and a cracked mirror fixed to the wall beside it. The walls and floor of the room seemed to be made of a single sheet of untextured metal, providing no seams that could lead to a potential escape. A small camera hung suspended from the corner of the room, panning slowly from left to right, a blinking red light on its underside the only indication it was activated.

JT sat on one of the benches, staring glumly at his friend who lay on the bench opposite him, his chest slowly rising up and down with each laboured breath.

"What shit've you gotten me into now, you dumb bastard?"

Naki didn't answer. He didn't expect him to, not yet. One of the medics attached the platoon of marines stationed aboard _The Eden _had performed a cursory examination on him, announced he was just sleeping it off, and that he'd be fine. The same medic had suggested he was simply drunk, and the half-empty pouch of whiskey in his jacket pocket only went to support that theory.

JT knew Naki, and he figured that was about right.

"This is by far the worst thing you've ever done. Fuck knows what you've actually done, though…"

"You want to shut up in there?" a gruff voice called out from the other side of the sealed door. A grizzled face appeared at the small window, riddled with pale purple acne scars that covered his snarling face. "Should've got you sedated, too."

"Try it," JT muttered, looking at the curled up form of Evelyn beside him. Despite the size of the colony settler, there was only one brig, which meant that all three people had been thrown into the same room. As soon as Evelyn had seen Naki she'd become near hysterical, screaming and babbling incoherently. The medic had quickly administered a sedative to calm her down, and she'd quickly retreated into a foetal position and slipped into a restless sleep. JT sat beside her, running her fingers through her blonde hair in a bid to keep her calm. The fact of the matter was that the sedative was calming her down, and the intimate contact only served to calm himself and no one else. He carefully stood up and walked over to the sink, turning on the tap and wetting his hands before splashing his face and running his fingers through his dark hair. Gripping the sides of the basin, he glared into the mirror, at the pale face and dark sunken eyes that glared back at him: the skin beneath them was purple and inflamed, telling the tale that he'd been awake for longer than he should. He was overdue a shave, too, his jaw covered in a spattering of dark stubble. How long _had _he been awake? Maybe he should get some of that sedative, get some sleep before the Captain decided to haul them out the brig and interview them one at a time.

"Fuck me," murmured a deep voice behind him, and JT spun on his heel, staring at the form of Naki on the bed as he slowly hauled himself up into an upright position. He looked glumly at his wrists and the bindings that kept him restrained, then around his location with bleary eyes. "Jesus, what have you gotten me into now, JT?"

JT didn't answer, simply stormed across the room, grabbed him by the collar of his undershirt, and slammed him up against the wall. Snarling and bearing his teeth, he didn't treat his friend with kid gloves or waited to see how he was.

"What have you done now, Naki? What have you gotten us in to?"

"Us?" Naki murmured, pushing away JT and dropping back down to the bed, rubbing gently at his temples with his hands. "You mean…" he looked up, saw the prone form of Evelyn lying on the opposite side of the room. He nodded casually towards her. "What's she doing here?"

"What're _any _of us doing here, you drunken bastard?" JT screamed. His voice was loud enough to make Evelyn stir slightly, but not enough to bring her out of the drug-induced coma. "I want to know what the fuck happened, and I want to know now! Maybe between the two of us we can work out what the hell happened."

"I… I don't remember," Naki confessed, shaking his head and gently nursing it with both hands. "Something about a snake… security guards… blood… I don't know; it's all a blur."

"Because you were drunk," JT snapped. "You were drunk, and you were found in one of the women's locker rooms, surrounded by blood: and it wasn't yours. They're probably matching it against the ships records now, running a check for anyone reported as missing."

"The locker room," Naki agreed, shakily nodding his head. "That's right, that's where the snake was…"

"Enough with the fucking snake," JT spun on his heel and walked away from his befuddled friend. He had to put some distance between Naki before he lost his temper and tried to knock him out. He knew he'd fail; Naki was far stronger and more resilient in a fistfight than JT was, the numerous bar fights they always managed to somehow end up in a testament to this. "If there was a snake…" JT's voice tailed off as he slumped to the bench beside Evelyn. He grabbed Evelyn's hand and scowled. "Serpents… wait, can you remember any details about the snake? Anything at all?"

"Long tail, pointy teeth, how the fuck should I know? I'm not a god-damn botanist."

"Botanists study flowers," JT muttered absentmindedly, dismissively waving the thought away. "There was something in the infirmary, but it wasn't a snake, it was… I don't know, more like a human, or at least a humanoid creature. It killed a couple of people… Maybe an animal that's escaped?"

"Well, did you tell the captain this?"

"Does it look like I did? If I started telling him about more dead bodies in one of the infirmaries, we probably would have been shot on the bridge, and our bodies tossed out that damn faulty airlock."

"Fuckin' Captain Marx," Naki shook his head, rubbing at his chest, kneading his breastbone with his knuckles. "Well, Christ, what do we do now?"

"I don't know… Jesus, this is…" JT's head was spinning with the events that had unfurled around him. It was clear that at least two of the more ferocious animals had escaped from one of their holding cells, but until this was corroborated with ship records, the fact Naki had been found unconscious in a pool of blood and JT was wandering around with a hysterical doctor and a recently discharged firearm was damnable evidence against them.

"Well, we've got some things going for us. Security feed for a start, that's going to show what really happened in the locker room."

"Well, we've got some people working on that," the face of a Marine appeared at the small window in the door, different to the pock-scarred face that had been there before, though just as stern: cold blue eyes fixed JT with an icy glare, and the square, stubble-covered jaw of the man clenched and unclenched as he watched over the trio within the cell. "Matter of fact, we've got a number of people working on a few different things. Seems like all this shit with you three's only been the tip of the iceberg. Something you want to tell me? An uprising or something, maybe you're all working for pirates or something? Take use down from the inside?"

"You're joking," Naki snorted, shaking his head. He glared at the Marine, and gulped. "Christ, you're not joking, are you?"

"You tell me if I'm joking," the Marine snarled as the door to the brig was opened and he strolled in, accompanied by two other soldiers, one on either side of him and pointing their weapons at the two active men in the room. The speaker was clearly in charge, his minders and bodyguards remaining silent and stoic, fixing their gaze on JT and Naki. "Some poor bastard goes missing in the engineering decks, then turns up days later almost dead. I send him to med-lab to get checked over, and leave two of my men there to keep an eye on him: make sure that nothing happens to him, or that whoever tried to kill in him the first place doesn't try to return to finish the job. Now, I've got two marines missing, half a bloody body left in the med-lab, the doctor in charge a complete gibbering mess, and a delinquent pilot in possession of an illegal firearm that's been fired a number of times. In the mean time, his friend turns up in a locker room, drunk and surrounded by blood. No bodies."

He circled around behind his minders and sat down on one of the benches, looking glumly at his hands before running his fingers through the close-cropped mousey brown hair he sported. Sighing heavily, he crossed one calf over the other and reclined slightly, laying his head against the wall of the cell.

"And now, the damn Captain of the ship's missing, along with another forty or fifty crew from different areas around the shop. Now, I want you to tell me exactly what's going on, and how many of you there are working here. I'm only going to ask you one time."

"We're not pirates," JT protested, stepping forwards as he spoke. Both marines swung their weapons around and pointed them at his head, each with a perfect shot lined up on his head. He paused and stepped back, his hands raised to show he was no threat. "We're not marauders, we're not trying to take anyone down. We were on duty, me and Naki: I got a call from Evie, she sounded like she was in trouble, so I went to check on here…"

"Abandoning your post in the process," the Marine nodded his head. "Carry on."

"I went to check on her, found the med-lab a shambles, lights out, no Marines on duty, and a dead body that looked like it was in the middle of an autopsy. I found Evie in a cupboard, terrified, and she was talking about a serpent. I was attacked by a…"

"A snake?" suggested the Marine with a smirk.

"I don't know what," JT admitted, shrugging his shoulders. "It was dark; it could've been anything." The truth was that JT could remember the details of the creature very well, the animal was embedded in his mind, but he was just having a hard time believing everything, and an even harder time trying to describe it.

"And what about you, Redhorn?"

"As soon as I…" Naki began, stopping abruptly as a coughing fit wracked his body. He turned his head to one side and spat a wad of phlegm onto the floor before recovering, rubbing at his throat as he continued. "As soon as JT fucked off to screw the good doctor there," he said with a wicked grin directed at his friend, "I was on my own. I took a nip of my whiskey pouch, just the one, I swear, and tried to find something to keep myself entertained. A while ago, I'd managed to hack into security cameras. I flicked through a couple of scans before I came across a picture of this locker room."

"Drinking on duty," the Marine held up his hand and counted off the cases of negligence and misconduct. "Hacking into restricted security feeds for your own enjoyment and entertainment. What else you got?"

"I seen some women get attacked on the screen. Some kind of snake, I don't know what kind of snake, I'm not an expert. How many dangerous critters we got aboard this ship, anyway?"

The Marine shrugged his shoulders.

"Anyway, it started eating this woman, I called security, but they weren't interested. So I went to see if there was anything I could do."

"Abandoning your post," the Marine counted off the third act on his hand. "Very responsible. What then?"

"I… I can't remember," Naki shrugged apologetically. "Everything's a blur, a fuzzy memory. Next thing I remember for sure is waking up here."

The Marine sat in silence as he mulled this story over, looking slowly from one man to the other, then finally at the prone woman on the bench opposite him. "You know," he finally said. "It sounds like complete bullshit to me: but just enough bullshit to be believable. Maybe. Now…" he stopped speaking as one of the many pouches on his webbing beeped, and he opened it up, flipping open the small device and peering at the screen while adjusting the radio headset he wore.

"Stevens here. Yeah, I'm ready. I'm here with them now. Patch it through."

He fell silent as he watched his portable view screen while JT and Naki watched, waiting for his response. His face was devoid of any emotions as he watched the screen, but after a few minutes he tapped the screen and flipped the screen over in his hand, presenting the portable device to the two prisoners. "This look familiar?"

Both Naki and JT looked at the screen, and the vision of the pale yellow creature coiled around the thigh of a woman, it's head buried in the bloody wound it had tore into the fleshy buttocks of the corpse. Blood had sprayed across the lockers and floor around the creature and its meal, and flecks of the same crimson fluid spattered the pale flesh of the animal. While JT shook his head slowly, unfamiliar with the creature, Naki blanched and held his hand over his mouth as he felt the bile begin to rise. He nodded his head slowly, motioning to the screen.

"That's it. Little bastard."

"But it's not the creature from the med-lab?"

Again, JT shook his head.

"We're going to have to wake your friend up, check to see if this is what she saw."

"If we have to," JT nodded solemnly, gently lifting Evelyn and sitting her upright, brushing aside a few strands of her blonde and hooking them behind her ears. They were pointed slightly, contributing to her elfish good looks that JT had come to fall in love with as she'd grown older. She stirred slightly, murmuring to herself, her eyes flickering open slowly and blearily peering around the cell, at the five men watching her. Two of them she recognised, the other three were Marines she'd never seen before. She smiled dreamily at JT, frowned at Naki as if there were something she was supposed to remember, about him.

"Evie, are you okay? How're you feeling?"

"Sleepy," she moaned, wrapping her arms around JT and leaning her head against his shoulder. "Sleepy, Johnny, need to sleep."

"Ma'am," Stevens addressed her, bowing his head slightly. "Corporal Stevens, USMC. I need to ask you a few questions."

"Stevens," she nodded with a grin. "Dealer."

"That's right," Stevens nodded with a smile. "That's me. I guess you've heard about me."

"Just the guys that brought him in. The marines… Jules… said you were in charge."

"That's right. Can you remember what happened to him? I need to know… was it anything to do with this?"

He handed her the portable screen, and she reached out to accept it with shaking hands as she looked at the creature in the image. Her face twisted and contorted in horror as she threw the screen across the room, hurling the device against the wall.

"I guess that's a yes," Stevens nodded to the Marines either side of him. They left the room, leaving the door open as the corporal as he retrieved the screen, dusting it off and turning it off before slipping it back into his pouch. "Okay, I've got to file a report, but some men out there, especially on the hydroponics domes… are you okay?"

Stevens looked over at Naki, who had doubled over in a violent coughing fit, shaking his head and banging his chest with a clenched fist. JT leapt up and rushed to his friend's aid, thumping on his back with the palm of his hand and trying to help clear his windpipe. He dropped to his knees, his palms flat against the floor and his back arching as he convulsed and screamed in agony.

"Get a medic," JT shouted, rolling his friend on his back and trying to pin him down by the shoulders, trying to put a halt to his trashing movements.

"Don't hold him down, if he's having a fit you'll only damage him," Stevens commanded, making his way to the door and swinging his head around the frame. "Mayer, get over here, we need you."

JT watched helplessly as his friend rolled from side to side, fingers twisted and gnarled in a claw: he opened his mouth, and a horrific belching roar tumbled out, echoing and deafening in the confines of the room. He trashed around few a few more seconds, then fell silent, his eyes glazed over and staring vacantly at the ceiling.

"What the fuck was that?" demanded Stevens, looking over at Evelyn for some kind of response: she was in no position to give any answers, her feet pulled up onto the bench beside her, arms wrapped around her knees and pulled in tight, rocking back and forth slightly. The corporal shook his head, angrily looking at JT. "You're girlfriend's a real shit doctor, you know that? One medical emergency and she freaks out."

"What happened?" demanded another soldier as he appeared at the door, clutching a hard case filled with medical supplies. "What's going on?" Stevens shrugged by way of response, waving to the Indian lying on the ground. "He just dropped to the ground and had a fit."

"I see. Any history of epilepsy with your friend?"

The medic looked at Stevens, then JT: both men shrugged their shoulders. He dropped to his knees by the prone form, gently placing his fingers on Naki's neck, then wrist. He frowned, checking the neck again. "I can't find a strong pulse, but he's breathing well enough. I need to… Jesus!"

Naki erupted into another bout of fits, his back arching and arms flailing, his chest bouncing up and down as if being pulled by ropes from above. He screamed, another bellicose roar that echoed in the room, and a deafening crack sounded from deep within his chest: a fine trickle of blood appeared on his shirts, a thin line running almost a foot in length from naval to neckline. Naki fell silent, dropped limply to the ground, his ribs bouncing up and down as his breathing laboured. They continued to pulse as his head rolled lifelessly to one side, his tongue lolling out his mouth and eyes blank. Another crack sounded, and his chest bulged, ripped, then exploded outwards, spraying the room and its inhabitants with a misting of gore and fragments of shattered bone. JT and Stevens stared in horror at the opened torso that lay before them, at the exposed organs and the creature that nested in the middle of it.

Sitting amongst lungs and heart covered in bite and claw marks, the same snake that had been displayed on Stevens' screen peered around with an eyeless face, snarling and hissing with a mouth filled with tiny, needle-sharp teeth the colour of metal, dripping bloodied saliva. Its pale skin, a chitinous armour like the shell of an insect, was coated in a slick layer of blood, gleaming dimly in the light of the cell.

"Christ," Stevens murmured, slapping his thigh and drawing his pistol from his holster, pulling it free and levelling it off at the creature. Before he could squeeze of a shot, the serpent creature uncoiled its length from the shattered torso and bolted out the room, leaving behind a trail of gore that streaked out the door and out of sight.

"What the fuck was that?" the medic murmured, stepping away from the twitching corpse.

"Jesus," JT moaned, scrambling away from the corpse of his friend.

"I want a quarantine lockdown on this entire ship," Stevens snapped, barking his orders into his microphone pickup. "Get guards posted at all medical facilities across the ship, double security around the domes: send out an update to the Behemoth cruisers around us, and monitor chatter on the other ships for anything similar."

Stevens looked at JT, then motioned to him and Evelyn, urging them to get up and move towards the door and out the cell. "Your story seems to check out."


	8. Chapter 7

VII

The depths of the engineering deck rumbled and groaned as the engines continued to pulse, the heat given off from the equipment giving the nursery a stifling, moist warmth that lingered in the air in the form of a pale blue mist that blanketed the ground. The walls on all sides of the chamber were dark, thick and encrusted with a resinous material that signified where human technology ended and the alien nest began. Like intestinal tracts coated in a gleaming opaque shell, the alien secretions looped around support struts and pipes, the structures coated in dew and mucus.

In the centre of the chamber, the matriarch of the hive rested, her swollen abdomen pulsing and trembling as more and more eggs slipped from the slime-coated sac and onto the ground, or into the waiting arms of a warrior creature, who would lovingly carry the eggs away from the centre of the nest, placing them closer to the walls and the men and women that had been affixed there within the hive. Some of the inhabitants were pale, lifeless husks, their chests torn open and vacant, their entrails having been consumed by the infant creatures that had either been born there or retreated there from the many birth that were happening all across the ship. Other bodies lay silent and still, their faces engulfed by eight-legged creatures that pulsated and quivered, slowly forcing their embryos down the throats of their intended hosts and deep into their chest cavity.

As another creature was born on the ship, this one distant and beyond the reaches of the nursery, the mother alien raised her immense head, her piston-like jaws slowly opening and closing as she issued a silent command to the newborn: an urge to retreat to the sanctity of the hive where it could feed and mature in the safety of its kin. The queen's link with her children was strong, she knew what they knew and saw what they saw, and vice versa: though the immense egg-layer had never left the confines of her domain since arriving, the ins and outs of the ship were well known to her through the senses of her brood. Her presence was like a beacon to her children, and a trail of pheromones detectable only to the creatures laid a trail directly to her.

But her clan was by no means as large as it could be.

All around her, in the surrounding ship, she could sense the life, the _essence _of the crew and its cargo: animals destined for colonies far off or yet to be set up, a multitude of hosts to expand her family. And then, beyond the confines of the ship… were there others? Even outside the walls of the ship, she could feel the closeness of a wealth of other life forms, warm and inviting.

One step at a time.

She issued another command, an order to all the mature children under her guidance, to reach out and spread their taint across the vessel. Though the drones continued to tend to the eggs and their mother, the warriors around the miniature hive awakened, revealing themselves from their hiding places amongst the webbing and cocoons. Muscles as strong as steel cables tensed and relaxed, coiled tails of ridged bone tipped with razor-sharp barbs unfurled from shapeless mounds and unwrapped from around rigid limbs as the aliens roused themselves from their slumber, their forms previously camouflaged amongst the convoluted ridges of the hive structure. Each creature was silent as it roused itself from its slumber, like wraiths rising from their graves, before eagerly filing out the chamber and into the ductwork of the craft.

One step at a time.


	9. Chapter 8

VIII

Evelyn sat in the barracks of the Marines stationed aboard _The Eden_, a thick grey blanket made of coarse wool draped over her shoulders that irritated her neck where the material rubbed against her. She'd removed her bloodied labcoat and left it discarded by the overflowing garbage bin and held a small grey cup in her hands, the steaming black coffee having been laced with a generous quantity of synthetic brandy. She swilled the coffee around in the cup, staring into the black liquid, but hadn't attempted to drink it.

JT, however, was on his third coffee and brandy, and showed no sign of slowing down. He'd been offered the same blanket, and although he'd accepted it, he'd shrugged it off shortly after being given it. He muttered incoherently to himself, his brow furrowed as he tried to piece together everything that had happened.

Stevens had left them together to work through things on their own with one soldier looking after them, and now sat at one of the tac-ops consoles as he worked through hundreds of security cameras and feeds on the multitude of screens. The console itself was standard issue for a Marine platoon, ripped right out the guts of an APC and welded into place in the barracks, separated from the rest of the room by partitions made from steel plating. It wasn't soundproof, but it was enough to give the commanding officer enough privacy to review all the video footage he needed, or to make any tactical commands in any operations that may be underway on the ship. And currently, the mission in hand was trying to track down mutant snakes, the location of the captain and other missing members of the crew, and the Marines that were currently MIA.

Of course, Stevens wasn't the highest-ranking soldier in the platoon aboard _The Eden_. There were another three platoons spread through the ship, each with a Sergeant who reported to the one Lieutenant. He, in turn, communicated with the military vessels in the convoy, but at the moment Stevens' Sergeant was one of the missing men, and the Lieutenant was currently at a meeting aboard one of the military cruisers. He'd taken it upon himself to review what material he could, but nothing seemed to cast any more light on the situation. People could be seen leaving the frame of one camera, and where they should have appeared on the next of the fixed cameras, there was nothing: as if they were being abducted in the shadows, or just around the corner, out of view. The only solid pictures that gave anything to go on were the screen dumps of the serpent from the locker room and the feed from the prison cell that had recorded the bloody birth of the creature from Naki Redhorn's body. That scene had been bloody and disturbing, and had certainly shaken the two civilians outside. Stevens had been a Marine for a long time, however, and had seen a number of horrific things in his tour of duty. A wild animal chewing its way through a person wasn't the worst thing he'd seen, but it ranked up there in his top five.

"Anything?" one of the Marines stood by the door in the partitions, two cups of coffee in her hands. She lifted one as if to offer it to Stevens, and he nodded with a grin, waving her in. He knew the private by face, but not her name. He quickly scanned the breastplate of the woman's armour, but unlike most other soldiers in the squad, she hadn't gotten around to personalising her uniform. His puzzlement must have been clear on his face as she settled down into the seat next to him and handed over the coffee.

"Don't know my name, do you?"

"I outrank you," Stevens grinned. "I could get away with just calling you Private."

"Don't sweat it, I'm just new. Transferred over from _Gaia _in the last rotation, I was brought in from Gamma Outpost, this is my first tour."

"A greenhorn," Stevens nodded. "Explains your virginity."

"Excuse me?" the female Marine recoiled slightly, an embarrassed look on her face as her cheeks flushed red.

"Clamshells are untouched," Stevens said, pointing to her bare plates of armour, then motioning to his own colourfully detailed protective shells. "Haven't gotten around to marking anything on your plating. Like a name, or anything."

"Dawes," she said, looking at the vast array of screens set out before her. "Claudia Dawes. Comtech, first class."

"Comtech, huh? Maybe you want to give me a hand?"

Dawes didn't wait for a second invite. She pulled her helmet off, let it drop to the floor and let her hair fall out, a shock of red tied in a ponytail that fell to her shoulders. Ignoring the questioning glances that Stevens gave her, she rolled the seat forwards and started to work one of the consoles, hammering a string of commands into the keyboard and concentrating on a black screen that scrolled luminous green text from top to bottom.

"Gamma didn't have a barber," she said by way of explaining her hair. It was far from regulations as far as length was concerned, but that was something Stevens would have to deal with later on. He had a lot more pressing issues to deal with, like finding the missing crew. "Okay, I'm guessing you've done a sweep for personal date transmitters, magnetic implants, everything like that?"

"Civs don't have the PDTs, not on the ship. Cost saving, plus how the hell can you loose people in an enclosed environment?" Stevens snorted at the irony of his comment before carrying on. "As for the magnetic implants for the Marines, I'm getting nothing for them. They're either in a shielded environment, or not on board at all. And the last thing I want to do is send out Marines to sweep through all the shielded areas of the ship: there's too many areas to cover, and it's too dangerous. We don't know what they're facing, after all."

"So there's nothing to go off. Who're we missing, have you tried tapping in to the live feed from their helmet cams?"

"I don't know what the hell I'm doing," Stevens conceded, pushing away from the console. "I can't pull anything up for anyone."

"Give me a shot. Jules is one of the missing men, right?"

"One of the first," Stevens nodded, watching in awe as Dawes' fingers danced over the keyboard, one of the multitude of blank screens on the console burst to life to display a screen filled with static and white noise, the faintest of signals coming through from the missing Marine's helmet camera, wherever that was.

"Got something, but it's really weak. Shielded area, definitely, there's some major interference killing the signal. I'll boost the power to our receiver; see if we can pull something more from his gear."

More keys were tapped on the console and the static-distorted image cleared up slightly. The image was dark, almost black with the audio missing entirely. Dark blurs moved in the distance of the image, shapeless entities that seemed to flit in and out of the shadows. The architecture of the place was completely alien to Stevens, like nowhere he'd seen in the ship before. What muted light that did appear in the picture shone wetly on the misshapen structure of the room, like condensation. Dew on the trunks of a tree? Maybe one of the hydroponics domes? Stevens couldn't be sure, not without lightening the image or getting a stronger signal.

One of the dark shapes moved closer to the camera and it tried to pull the object into focus, though the murk of the environment still made it hard to make any details out. It was humanoid in shape, with long limbs and a distorted head. It took another step closer to the camera, features of the leering face pulling into focus even more. A grin that occupied most of its face, teeth like needles and gleaming wetly in the dull light, dripping with thick opaque mucus. It stormed past the helmet, the raised ridges of its limbs shining and glistening as it knocked the camera and skewed the vision as it tumbled to the floor, the screen blanking out to darkness before the signal dying altogether. Dawes tried tapping in the command to boost the signal even more, but nothing worked. She shook her head, sitting back from the screens as she hit the repeat button, setting the retrieved signal into a continuous loop.

"It's not much to go off," she admitted, her shoulders sagging.

"But it's better than nothing," Stevens smiled, casually placing his hand on her shoulder and squeezing it. "We get those civs in here, see if they can recognise anything from that video. Tomly!"

JT had already appeared at the doorway, having retrieved his blanket and draping it over his shoulders again after being refused more coffee by the Marine watching over him. He stepped into the secluded makeshift office without waiting for an invite, looking over the array of monitor screens that made up the console. He paid particular attention to the screen in front of Stevens as he tapped the screen with the tip of a pen, waving him closer.

"Take a look at this vid," the Corporal demanded, "See if there's anything you recognise: it's dark, but it's better than nothing."

JT watched the film, barely able to make anything out on the dark screen, until the creature that knocked the camera and finally killed the transmission came into view. JT excitedly pointed his finger at the screen, urging the picture to be frozen with the rictus grin in clear view.

"That's the fucker, right there. The thing in the medical lab, that's it. Some kinda humanoid thing, like a mutant gorilla."

"We got a gorilla and a bunch of killer snakes," Stevens shook his head. "Can the two possibly be related? What about the place, can you make anything out from the video about where it is?"

"Dark, maybe… I don't know, maybe one of the domes? Could be trees, maybe one of the jungle domes. Certainly where a gorilla would hang out."

"There's got to be a link between the two different animals, but I've checked through the manifests for the livestock, and can't find anything that matches what we're looking for. Maybe a radiation leak causing mutations? I don't know. We need more than a couple of grainy pictures to go off. The two things must be linked, somehow. Apes don't give birth to snakes…"

"And there's nothing shown on any of the other screens?"

"Keep scanning them," Stevens ordered Dawes, indicating the security panels. "Cycle through as many live feeds as you can. Snakes, monkeys, anything out the ordinary, shout out, patch the signal through to me," he patted the data tablet hanging from his belt.

He stormed out the office back into the main area of the barracks, motioning for the Marines lying on their beds as he headed over to the thick, heavily shielded doors that occupied one third of one of the walls. Stevens stabbed the keypad beside the door and stepped back as the locks cycled open and the shutters rolled back, revealing a sparsely populated weapons rack with more empty spaces than occupied ones. The marines around him rushed forwards and grabbed their designated weapons, the devices that they were most familiar with.

"We've not got much," Stevens announced, grabbing an F-48 riot gun, a bulky and box-like combat shotgun designed to fire canister rounds. He grabbed a box of the oversized buckshot loads, thirty millimetre rounds originally designed for use with the underslung grenade launchers of the pulse rifles that most of the other marines had opted for. He fed six of the rounds into the internal magazine, slipped the rest into a pouch attached to his webbing, then watched as the men around him started to load up their own weapons.

"What's going on?" JT asked, having returned to his seat beside Evelyn and watching as the soldiers went about their business of arming themselves. "Have you found something?"

"Just getting ready," Steven's said grimly.

"Right," JT said, nodding his head. "Can I get my gun back? I'd feel a lot safer!"

Stevens snorted by way of response. "I'd feel a lot safer if I didn't have a civvie running around with an unsanctioned firearm that could pop a hole in our hull. We don't have a great deal of weapons here, but those that we do have are loaded with soft-slugs, purpose-built for firing inside a star ship: they don't penetrate any armour. Likewise with this shotgun here, the load won't piece a bulkhead. That weapon of yours… seemed pretty old, and the rounds not ideal for setting in a pressurised enviro."

"Well, can I get one of those?" JT asked, motioning towards the weapons that the Marines were handing out and preparing. Stevens didn't bother responding.

"Okay, Marines," he finally called out as the last of the soldiers cycled rounds into their weapons. "We've not got much to go on: people are missing and there may be mutated animals involved. I want everyone on duty; the shift rota is on hiatus until this is sorted out. I want walk-throughs in pairs all across the ship, security details doubled. Soft slugs loaded up, safeties off, but stay frosty. I want Rames and Kaymer to head over to enviro-control, make sure all the ventilation shafts are sealed and secured: it looks like the animals are using these as their main source of transportation around the ship. And stay there on guard, make sure no one tries to tamper with the settings."

Two of the Marines nodded their understanding and ran from the barracks while Stevens continued to talk through the plans.

"We need to keep the civs in their quarters wherever possible. We still need to have this ship run, but put it on a skeleton crew wherever we can."

"I've got something," Dawes shouted from the secluded office area, and Stevens jumped, startled by the sudden announcement.

"Okay, buddy up and get out of here, keep in touch, I need two watching over the civs here. Make sure _he _doesn't get his hands on any hardware," Stevens ordered, jerking a finger towards JT, then stormed back into office, unaware the JT had decided to follow him.

"What have we got?"

"Communication from _The Vengeance_, looks like our Lieutenant is reporting in."

"About fucking time," Stevens muttered, throwing his weight down into the seat and strapping the headset on his head, facing the video screen and the scowling face of the bald man on screen. With beady eyes set back from an overhanging brow and podgy cheeks, he sneered when he saw Stevens, the corner of his mouth twitching and rising, showing the array of gunmetal-grey teeth in his cruel mouth, stained that colour by countless years of smoking black market cigarettes.

"Corporal," he spat, glowering and making an effort to lean to one side, then the other, as if by moving his head he could get a better view of the room: the camera was fixed, of course, and didn't provide anything extra. "I wanted to speak to Sergeant Targus, where is he?"

"Missing," Stevens said, not wanting to go any further into the issue: he'd been sending regular updates to Lieutenant Cray's data pad over the last seven hours, that should have kept him up to date with everything. _If _he'd bothered to read the reports. Cray was notoriously lazy, and if his Sergeant wasn't around to hold his hand, then he was normally well out the loop. "I've been sending updates…"

"Fuck the updates," Cray spat, sneering at the screen. "What do you mean, Targus is missing? Where is he?"

_When someone's missing, people normally don't know where they are_, Stevens thought, and had to bite his tongue from snapping at Cray, who had somehow worked his way up through the ranks to a Lieutenant, despite the fact his IQ barely met the minimum requirements for the Marines. Either Cray had bought his way into his current position, or he had 'convinced' someone he was right for the job, either through blackmail or brown-nosing.

"A number of crew have gone missing, sir, and Targus is one of them. They're off the map, not responding to any communications or reporting for their duty rota. We've been scanning through security footage to track their last known movements, but they just disappear. There's also been some…"

"Who else is missing besides Targus?"

"A lot of engineers, a couple of Marines, flight officers. Marx is missing, too."

"Marx?" Cray was livid, his face turning red as his blood pressure started to rise. "The captain's missing, and you don't feel it important to tell me?"

"It's all in the updates I've been piping over to you, I couldn't get directly through to you because you were in a meeting with the rest of the officers over there. But that's not even half the story."

"There's more?" Cray asked incredulously, shaking his head.

"There's glitches, errors, technical fuck-ups cropping up all over the damn ship, the thing may as well be falling apart. Aside from the missing crew, we also have casualties, sir. Two definite, with the potential of Christ know how many others."

"Casualties? Deaths? How the fuck did this happen? Too busy sitting on your ass playing cards with the rest of the men to do your job? Fuck sakes, what are you assholes paid for?"

"We think there may be a mutant animal or animals loose on the escape," Stevens shook his head. Cray was a dick as far as he was concerned, and it wasn't going to be long before he pushed him too far, and Stevens would have to cut loose on the officer. It had happened before – three years ago he'd been Sergeant Stevens, but his short temper twinned with incompetent officers had seen him moving back in the ranks.

"Have any of the hyperdonic domes reported any creatures missing?"

"No," Stevens shook his head grimly, fighting back his smile at the idiot in charge of him. "We've already checked with the _hydroponics _dome, they're not reporting anything out of the ordinary." Stevens made sure he put the emphasis on the correction of the word Cray had bumbled. It was a small victory in his eyes.

"Why animals, then?"

"Check your updates," Stevens growled through gritted teeth. "It's all in there: pictures, video footage, and my own report about how I watched a _snake_ chew its way out of one of the crew's chest."

Cray looked down, clearly fiddling with his data pad off screen as he tried to cycle through the information he'd been sent.

"There's pages of this shit," he muttered under his breath, before finally finding the footage Steven was referring to. He started with the camera that Dawes had managed to pull. "Dark as shit on there, you can't make anything out… what is that… Well, Christ, that could have been anything!"

"Play the next file."

Cray did as he was instructed (Stevens was surprised that he even knew how to operate the pad without Targus by his side), and could hear the muted, tinny conversation Stevens had taken place in while in the holding cells: then the tearing of flesh and the screams. Cray seemed to blanche a little, lifting his hand to his mouth and pressing it against his lips. He muttered something incoherent under his breath, then looked directly at the screen.

"This… thing… is it possible this is why people are disappearing? That the two things are linked?"

"That thing that came out of Naki," Evelyn muttered as she stumbled into the office and stood by JT, staring vacantly at the video screen. "That… that was what came out of Jameson."

"And who the fuck is that?" sneered Cray, aware of the voice but unable to see anyone else from his restricted view.

"Doctor Monroe," Stevens shook his head, "It's all there in the updates."

"I don't have time for updates," Cray shouted, "Tell me what's going on there _now_, and don't send me an update about it."

"Everyone's paired off, patrolling the ship. Weapons handed out, soft slugs and canister rounds. Vents are getting sealed off as we speak, in case those animals are moving through them. I'm going to get crew "

"Seems like a reasonable plan, for now," Cray muttered, albeit grudgingly. "Once we know what we're dealing with, I'm sure I can come up with something better, though: something not so… amateur. We'll see how things go in the hands of a professional."

"Well, fuck you too," Stevens grinned with a mock salute: he loathed Cray just as much as the officer did Stevens, and the pair had clearly grated on one another too much. "Maybe if you could find it in yourself to check you updates every so often instead of waiting to speak so someone to summarise everything for your simple mind to comprehend, then you could have been on top of this _hours _ago. Sir."

_Never forget the airs and graces: if you're gonna bite them on the ass, may as well be polite about it._

"Clearly you can't be trusted with this task," Cray spat, tossing aside his data pad and moving towards the control board to kill the communication link. "Looks like I have to cut this briefing short. The sooner I can get back over there and relieve you of command, the better. Once I get there, consider yourself dismissed, _Private _Stevens."

The screen cut to black, and this hiss and whine of static in his headset died as Stevens pushed back from the desk. A string of expletives seethed from Stevens' brain into his mouth, but died at his lips as he sighed inwardly. What was the point?

"What happened there?" JT asked, stepping forwards to examine the blank screen, as if he expected the leering face to reappear.

"Looks like a I just got a demotion," Stevens said bitterly. He stood up, grabbed his weapon, then left the office area, looking up and down the barracks: all the other soldiers had left on their assigned patrols. He looked over the people left in the room, the two civilians and the four Marines left, then sunk to the closest bed, shaking his head.

"Uptight son of a bitch," he finally managed to mutter.

"So what now, we just wait for something to happen?" JT asked, looking anxiously from Evelyn to Stevens, then back to Evelyn. Everyone was silent, waiting for someone to offer a suggestion, when the control panel in secluded office burst to life again with a garbled burst of static. Stevens snapped, jumping to his feet and storming back into the office, expecting to find Cray on the screen once more. Ready for another argument, he was pleasantly surprised to see the face of one of the Marines he'd sent out on patrol, though not as pleased when he saw the nervous look of terror on his face.

"Hello," he whispered hoarsely, peering into the camera mounted to the helmet of his buddy. Dawes tapped at the operations console and split the screen into two, showing the camera view of the talker himself. The pair on patrol stared at one another, and Stevens in turn stared at them. He couldn't name the pair, but they seemed to know him. "Is Dealer there?"

Stevens grinned. Another nameless face that he'd out-classed in poker at one point.

"I'm here," Stevens announced, grabbing his headset again. "What's wrong?"

"Um…" the speaker mumbled, licking his lips and wiping a fine sheen of sweat off his brow, then spun his head from left to right. The view from his camera lurched sickeningly to one side, then another, displaying a dark and silent corridor on both sides, the lights flickering wildly near the closest junction. "I can hear something scuttling around, in the walls or below the floor panels. Something's not right here: motion sensor's picking up a ton of movement all around."

"Our men? Other people on the ship?" Stevens suggested. "Do you want me to send out a ship-wide message, get everyone to stand still?"

"There's something different, something not… Jesus, did you hear that?"

Both cameras lurched to the side, focusing on the flicking junction in front of them. Though the microphone hadn't picked up the noise that had alerted the Marines, the camera could pick out the slightest flicker of movement in the dark distance: like mechanical pipes covered in glistening steam and a lazy coil of wiring wrapped around a hideously malformed shape that could almost be human. In one flickering burst of the light it was there, then the second, it was gone, leaving behind an empty junction. The microphone did pick up the sound of the pulse rifles the men held have a round cycled through them and lifted the muzzles into view: for a moment, Stevens felt like he was watching one of the old flat-screen video games that his father, a collector of twentieth century memorabilia, had in his prize collection of historical trash.

"Fuck me, did you see that?" asked the first.

"I think so," Stevens said, watching as Dawes rewound the footage on another screen and paused the image: it was grainy, and the thing in the darkness could have been anything.

"Madre de Dios," the second Marine whispered as the pair slowly advanced on the darkness. One of the cameras bobbed down to glance at the motion tracker he held, a glowing blue screen with a semi-circle on it, watching as a white arc pulsed out from the middle of the curve and picked out a mass of different sources of movement in front of the Marines.

"See? That's too dense for one of ours."

"Could still be civs," Stevens cautioned, then thumbed the button that would transmit to all the Marines across the ship. "Remember to check your targets, we're still in a civvie ship, there could be anyone out there."

A slew of affirmatives came back by response, but Stevens had already switched back to the comlink with the two Marines.

"Take it easy," he gently ordered as they reached the flickering junction. "Back up, stay out of the shadows. Got any flares?"

No verbal response came, but one of them hurled a flare into the darkness, a small stick no larger than a cigar, the end smouldering with a searing white magnesium flame and chasing away the darkness of the junction. There was nothing there, other than a pool of thick, viscous fluid that had pooled on the ground beneath an opened air vent on the ceiling. One of the cameras dropped down low, and a hand reached out to prop the gelatinous slime, testing the texture of the slime between thumb and forefinger.

"Coolant?" he suggested, bringing it closer to the camera, looking as though he was offering it to the viewers, but in actuality he was smelling it. He pushed it away with a dry, retching sound. "Fuck, that stinks. Like a fucking dead animal or something."

There was another sound, a soft and gentle hiss, and Stevens felt the muscles in his jaws clench as he thought for a brief moment that the hiss meant the killer snake was nearby, maybe in the vent above them. He didn't have to warn the soldiers, they were good at their job and knew what to expect.

Or they thought they did.

Still crouching on the floor, the Marine peered into the opened vent, but could see nothing. It looked big enough to house a snake, certainly. While they were trying to probe the darkness without any kind of operational flashlight – in their haste, they must have left them in their footlocker, and Stevens hoped that no other Marine had made the same mistake – there was another audible noise on the feed, the sound of metal clattering on metal at the far end of the corridor, and both men spun to face the new noise.

The creature had to be two meters tall, at the least, but it moved with a low, slouched gait. As dark as midnight itself, its carapace glistened in the artificial light as it moved, a hard chitinous shell covered in ridges, while its hands trailed along the ground as it moved, its six fingers on each hand flexing scraping against the floor panelling, steely talons that skipped and screeched like nails on a chalkboard. The head of the creature, an impossibly large tube-like skull balanced atop a thin neck, glared eyelessly at the Marines, swung rhythmically from side to side as it stalked forwards and displayed the ridges that ran the length of its head on either side. Lips as black as the rest of its body parted with a snarl, peeling back to reveal a mouth of razors: teeth almost opaque, dripping in the same translucent fluids that had been found on the floor, that were needle sharp. The maw parted, leaving a trail of ropey saliva spattering the floor behind it, and it hissed again, this time its tongue slowly pushing out from behind the curtain of drool, a piston tipped with a second set of needle-sharp teeth. Behind the animal, swinging lazily from side to side, was a segmented tail tipped with a wicked, curving spine of cartilage and bone that rattled as it snagged on any raised plating that ran the length of the corridor.

The Marines were slow to react, too slow by far, and the creature screamed again, this time a shrill and piercing call, a trumpeting call of a hunter alerting its pack members that their prey had been found. It rushed towards them, taloned hands and feet clattering across the metal as it broke into a charge.

The Marine opened up with their weapons, the ripping sound of the assault rifles chewing through ammo sounding deafeningly from the headset, then the muted echoes from the battle rolling into the barracks half a second later.

On screen, the soft slugs slapped the creature's armoured shell, none of them with enough force to penetrate the armoured skin, but certainly enough to make the creature stumble and falter in its attack. Lifting their aim slightly, the soft slugs traced a line of flattened lead up across its distended ribs and across its jaw before they finally found the softer interior of its mouth. The bullets did their damage there, pummelling the inside of the skull before cracking the back open and dropping the creature to the ground, a frothing volcano of glistening yellow blood arcing through the air before splashing the walls and floor, instantly hissing as the caustic fluids seared the metal.

What happened next was too quick to make out, the sudden blur of movements on the camera too much for anyone to make out exactly what happened: a blur of a black, six-fingered hand, a spatter of thick saliva on the lens. A hideously choked scream cut short by the sound of a bloody splatter, another by a deafening crack. One of the cameras flickered then shifted to static, the other dropped to the floor with a thud, then rolled to one side and flipped upside down, rocking back and forth on the dome of the helmet and showing the grisly remains of the Marine that had first contacted the barracks. Something had punched a ragged hole in his face, a sharp and irregular object that had the force to punch through the skull of the soldier and rip out a chunk of his brain. Dark red blood seeped from the mortal wound, pulsing out the hole for a few seconds until his heart stopped. Vacant, glazed eyes stared blankly into the camera.

From around the barracks, there were more gunshots echoing around the deck, followed by tortured screams and screams of a far more alien nature, the sounds of battle coming in from all over.

"Fuck," Stevens muttered, grabbing his riot gun and pumping a round into the breech. "Somebody get these civvies a gun, call back the guys on patrol and get Cray back on screen. We're going to need all the help we can get."


	10. Chapter 9

IX

The bridge aboard_ The Vengeance_ was buzzing with activity, each of the fifteen monitoring and control stations manned by well-trained men and women who were focused intently on their jobs, none of them distracted by the conversation happening on the raised circular dais where the commander of the ship resided in his seat of power.

Commander Thorn had served for almost twenty-five years in the Marines, the last seven of which he'd been in command of _The Vengeance_. He prided himself on being a Marine loved the corps to the core, and was never seen in anything other than a pristine dress uniform and sporting a ceremonial sword that had been presented to him during his graduation from flight school: a course he'd passed top of his class in, with honours.

_Christ knows how this asshole made it this far._

He glared at the lieutenant before him, Cray, and fought back the snarl that almost crossed his lips. The weasel had been negligent in his duties for so long now, which was why he'd been put on _The Eden_:after all, how much trouble could the lieutenant get in to aboard a long-haul colony settled if he failed to read a report, or didn't have his second in charge by his side to hold his hand? Well, apparently, he'd managed to do just that. And the answer was a shit-load of trouble.

"Personnel are missing from the ship, including the Captain and several Marines," Thorn said, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. "There's wild animals running around, and so far two people have been killed by these things? That we know of, at least."

Cray squirmed uncomfortably, his eyes locked with those of Thorn and a bead of sweat trickling down his brow.

"And you're telling me _now_, after how many hours?"

"Sir, yessir," Cray muttered uncomfortably. It looked as if the ass-kisser was going to be sick, his complexion as pale and grey as the metal plating of the deck around him.

"Why not when the first update came through from your ship? Why didn't you keep in touch with your men?"

"With all due respect, sir, they only sent reports, they didn't try to speak to me until it was too late. It was Steven's fault…"

"With all due respect, _Lieutenant_, Stevens is the only one who's been on top of things since the start of this thing, he's running things by the book as best as can be expected without a commanding officer present. Confining people to their quarters, pairs patrolling the ship, issuing the weapons like he did. Maybe _he _should be in charge of _you_, Cray. Communication is a two-way street, you should be keeping in touch with them."

A fire burned in his eyes as Cray glared at the commander, the scathing remarking not just a scornful comment, but nothing short of a slap in the face. Questioning his command was one thing, saying that Stevens, a man he obviously loathed, was better than him was quite something else, and something that tore him up inside. Seething, Cray bit his tongue as Thorn cycled through the different reports on the data pad. He stopped after watching the birthing of the snake creature from Naki's chest, paused the footage on the picture of the man's hollowed chest cavity and the bloody trail leading away from the corpse.

"We've got to nip this in the bud as soon as we can," Thorn finally said, looking up from the small screen. Cray cocked an eyebrow; though he was receiving the help he'd requested, he hadn't expected it to come so quickly, or without any begging or twisting. "Much as I'd like to see a whiny little fuck like you left hanging out to dry, if you screw this up, the entire damn fleet looks like a joke, and I in turn look like shit because of a weak link in the chain of command. I can only think this is something we've picked up on Gamma Outpost, something that's lain dormant until now."

Cray nodded dumbly, his mind still reeling from the speed at which Thorn had buckled.

"Go, get in your ship. I'll see that two contingents of Marines leave with you. I'm going to send Gunnery Sergeant Green with you. He'll be in charge of the two squads. You'll also report to him, who in turn will update me regularly. And I'll make damn sure I check my update regularly while you try to flush out the infestation. Any more deaths will be on your head, Cray, and if you fuck up now, I'll make sure your ass is nailed to the wall for this."

While Thorn let Cray mull on this, one of the monitoring stations lit up, and the operator spun around, a stunned expression on his face as he pressed his headset closer to his ear. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn't have dreamed of approaching the Commander in his nest, especially when he was in the middle of a meeting. However, there were always exceptions to the rules.

"Status update from _The Eden_, sir!"

"Put it on the main screen," Thorn announced, waving towards the largest video screen hanging above the expansive and thick view port that made one entire wall of the bridge. In the brief second it took for the screen to come to life, Thorn looked at the other nine ships in the fleet, at the Marine entourage and colony construction ships, then the three hydroponics ships at the forefront of the fleet, their lengthy bodies dotted in bulbous domes filled with artificial environments, livestock and vegetation. This was _Thorn's _fleet. The commanders of the other Behemoth cruisers probably thought the same, but that didn't make Thorn any less defensive of his ships. As he thought this, the screen flickered to life, showing the face of a Marine in full battle dress, his helmet pulled down over his brow and shading his ice-blue eyes. His angular jaw, sporting a spray of stubble, tightened as he played a cigarette back and forth over his lip. A pair of playing cards could be seen on the top of his helmet, a king of hearts and a joker, and Thorn guessed by the sneer that appeared on Cray's face that this was the notorious Stevens he claimed made his life hell.

"Forgive me for being blunt, Cray, but we don't have time for our normal pleasantries. The shit's hit the fan here: whatever the fuck these things are, they're fucking killers. We've lost … how many? Fifteen Marines dead already, another seven injured or incapacitated: soft slugs don't have any affect on them. We're in the barracks for now; we've set the alarms off and tried to get everyone locked down in safe rooms across the ship. We don't know if they got the vents shut down, we've lost contact with most areas outside."

"Christ, Stevens, can't you do _anything _right?"

"Stevens," Thorn said, ignoring Cray's outburst. "We're sending two squads of Marines over in a dropship. Are the landing bays secure? Can you clear a path?"

"We can try, Commander," Stevens nodded, recognising the officer. "Cameras are down: a lot of systems are, we can't tell if they're all linked or not."

"What are we dealing with, exactly?"

"Fuck knows," Stevens looked uncertain, not only of his report, but also the situation: he kept casting glances over his shoulder, as if he were looking for something. "We've got some footage from a camera… Dawes, can you patch that through to them?"

The footage played, a trimmed down version that took up from the moment the alien creature was first seen, while Stevens continued to speak over the scene of carnage. Everyone on the bridge slowly stopped what they were doing, turned to watch the footage of the creature and its killer brethren. "It's not human, and it's not something I can think we'd be carrying in the domes. Maybe a parasite picked up at Gamma, we can't tell. Whatever they are, they're vicious, violent, and their blood's highly corrosive: I've got one Marine who lost his hand in a carotid spray."

"You've done well," Thorn nodded his head thoughtfully as he digested the footage, "Kept your cool, despite the shit that's going on around you. And the less-than-perfect guidance you've been given by your commanding officer. Clear a path to the shuttle bay, meet up with my men there. You can liaise with my Gunnery Sergeant there; together the two of you can work out the best course of action to take the ship back, get rid of whatever these things are. Cray will stay here."

Stevens grinned slightly, was about to say something else, when a loud sound came from off camera, like a sheet of metal tearing apart, and Stevens stepped back, swinging his weapon about and firing a canister round at an unseen target. A staccato of gunfire blared through the speakers, followed by a shrill cry, a piercing cry: an inhuman scream of pain and rage. The screen showed Stevens retreating backwards, his weapon sounding again and again as he worked the oversized slide, the explosive blast of his weapon a harsh contrast to the rapid chatter of automatic fire that resonated through the transmission. The screen blurred and shifted, a dark and animal shape streaked across the screen, then a gunshot sounded, different to the shotgun or pulse rifles, and the screen blinked off.

"Transmission's been terminated from _The Eden's _end, sir," one of the coms operators announced, almost unnecessarily.

"Get some men armed and ready in the shuttle bay, ASAFP," Thorn snapped over his shoulder, and two operators leapt to their duties, their fingers feverishly tapping keys and relaying verbal commands to men around the ship.

"You're not going with then, Cray," Thorn continued. "We need some decent men over their with combat skills, not some fuckwit dipshit who had their stripes bought with their family millions. Experience counting credits isn't going to be worth shit when it comes to the crunch. I can find some task to keep you out of trouble here."

Cray looked both annoyed and relieved at the same time from the bittersweet comment: angry at the fact he'd been thoroughly dressed down in front of the bridge, but inwardly overjoyed that he'd avoided going into the lethal combat zone.

"Patch me through to the closest Yutani rep," Thorn commanded, nodding towards the coms officer. "Anyone will do."

"Patching us through to Gamma Outpost, now," the officer announced, hammering at the console before him. 'Busy signal, sir. Leave a message?"

"Override, priority one. I need to speak to him, immediately. Patch it through direct to my chair, private and secured line."

"You know something," Cray said under his breath. "More than you're letting on."

"Are you still here?" Thorn asked, distractedly, then waved him away. "Get off my bridge, Cray, before I have you detained in the brig. Do we have a signal? Do we have a feed?"

A small screen blinked to life by the arm of his Thorn's chair as Cray wearily trudged from the bridge, his shoulders slouched, and he caught the glimpse of the company executive that appeared on the screen. Golden blonde hair swept to one side with a clean-shaven jaw, the man looked to be in his late twenties, though all executives were notoriously vain and paid hundreds of thousands of credits a year on surgery and rejuvenation treatments. Davis Stonelaw was in his late fifties and the company executive running things on Gamma Outpost: this far out in the middle of nowhere, he was the closest thing to God as far as the Weyland-Yutani funded fleet was concerned. Thorn had taken the opportunity to spend some time with Davis during their re-supply and leave on the station, knowing fine well that sometimes it paid to know people in high places.

"Thorn," Davis recognised the officer, offering a lazy salute before glaring bleary-eyed at the chronometer strapped to his wrist. "I hope this isn't social call at an unsociable hour. I'm in the middle of a meeting here." He looked like he was naked, he certainly wasn't wearing any top, and in the background of the feed he could hear female voices and see vaguely shifting shapes in the shadows of the room.

Thorn didn't return the salute: he hated it when civilians thought saluting a Marine of any ranking was the right thing to do, but in this case it was a grey area: the Company were in charge of the fleet, and they certainly contributed a large amount of funding to the armed forces in general, mostly so they could use a little more muscle when required in the form of personal favours. Thorn wasn't sure if that meant he reported to Davis, if it were the other way around.

"The fleet's in trouble," Thorn said bluntly. He didn't see the point in mincing his words, nor pandering the egotistical executive as they normally expected. He spoke in a low voice so the rest of the bridge couldn't hear him, and the small speakers in the headrest of his seat were angled just so, so that no one else could hear the other side of the conversation. "_The Eden_ seems to have some exotic organisms on board, hostiles that have claimed fifteen military and at least two civilian casualties."

There was a delay in transmission, a couple of seconds that would have been longer the further away from the outpost they got. Thankfully, it was still possible to have a conversation over a live feed, if only a little extended. After another week of travel, it could have taken hours to get his response: Earth itself was almost three weeks away, communication wise. Davis seemed to perk up a little once the words reached him: "Casualties?" he repeated

"Confirmed kills," Thorn nodded his head solemnly and rapped his fingers against he small keypad on the arm of his chair, compressing the footage from the combat helmet and Stevens' reports before hitching the file the communication signal. "I'm sending an encoded data file now: I suggest you don't watch it in front of your 'business associates' before vetting it. We don't know where they came from: it's possible they're something that we picked up from Gamma, our last port: have you experienced anything…"

"You didn't pick up shit from Gamma," Davis shook his head, his eyes flicking down from the screen as he attempted to cut Thorn off and load up the video that he'd received. "Gamma was fine before you came, we were fine after you went. The last thing we need is to have you badmouthing us… Jesus fucking Christ, what is that thing? What the fuck is it?"

"I take it Gamma has nothing like that running around," Thorn said. Davis was shaking his head as he spoke, not in response to his question but the footage of the killings. "I'm sending two squads over to secure the landing decks, then we can start to evacuate the craft. With all the civvies out, we can really hunt those creatures out, I think."

Thorn waited for his words to get through, then watched as Davis shook his head while reading the updates and watching all the video footage, muttering quietly to himself before speaking loud enough for the microphone to pick up.

"Don't pull anyone off there, and don't put anyone _in_. These things, these exotics, they're a parasite and a killer, some fucking biohazard: whatever burst out the chest of that guy must be linked, like some kind of contagious disease or an airborne spore before it hatches. You start shifting people around from ship to ship; the entire fleet's going to be infected. Remember the colonies that were lost to Red Lung ten years ago on the outer rim? Someone forgot to follow protocol, pushed few people around, wiped out seven colonies in a week. I don't want the fleet lost, and I don't want to risk Marines going in to an infected zone. Lock down the ship, emergency quarantine, make sure nothing can get off there."

"It's not a disease, it's an _animal_, and they're going to tear their way through the crew if we don't pull them out of there."

"How many people are aboard _The Eden_?" Davis asked, shaking his head as he spoke. "A couple of thousand, plus the cattle and whatever the fuck else they've got in those domes, monkeys, sharks, shit like that. Too many to spread around the rest of the fleet, that's for certain. Lock it down in quarantine, see if you can get it turned around and escort it back to Gamma: we can get it locked down there."

"Stonelaw," Thorn murmured, making his voice lower, almost a whisper. "I think I may know something about this. I need you to access some files on the company network for me. High security files, out here you're the only person who can get what I need.'

"So you're some kind of exotic specialist now?" Davis sneered. "Didn't know that the Marines did a crash course in shit like that."

"See if you can access directives under Black Cancer," Thorn said, watching as Davis' fingers worked at the keypad in front of him. A scowl crossed his face that turned into a puzzled frown as the seemingly random search criteria he'd been given pulled up a series of coded and encrypted files.

"Son of a bitch," Davis growled. "This stuff's over twenty years old…"

"Twenty three," Thorn corrected him, almost puffing out his chest. "I wasn't always in charge of a Behemoth-class Marine Starship, I started off my military career as a ground-pounder, just like most others. I was in a special squad, dealing with mostly black-op stuff, under the radar bullshit most other grunts would balk at. We were briefed – hastily, at best – during one of our raid and rescue missions. Closing down some rat-shit prison and rounding up whatever bugfuck prisoners were still kicking around in there, while at the same time dealing with a… an exotic. We went in, hazmat seals in place and locked down, with some high-strung exec leading us like a fucking general leading the cavalry."

"But you were too late. For the exotic, at least. Dumped in a vat of molten lead…"

"The report's there, I take it," Thorn nodded his head. "I never thought about this until I seen that video, the birth of one of them. It brought all the memories back, reminded me of that covert mission all those years ago. I think these things might be linked to it, somehow. I don't know how they got here, but that's them, I swear."

"We definitely can't let these spread into the rest of the fleet," Davis shook his head. "Do as I said: lock it down, turn it around, escort it back. Don't let anything off it. Get them back here to the outpost, I'll get everything prepared for your arrival."

"It'll take a couple of weeks," Thorn nodded. "Maybe longer, turning around could take some time with these things."

"We'll be ready," Davis assured him before terminating the communication. Thorn settled back into his chair before keying in his personal code that would link him with the bridge of _The Eden_. The screen on his chair crackled to life, awash with a faint sheen of static, before clearing up into the vision of the bridge of vessel, eerily quiet and strangely devoid of anyone. He fed the screen through to the main screen, motioning towards it and talking to no one in particular. "Shouldn't there be skeleton crew in there, controlling the damn thing? Whose names are on the duty rota?"

"Naki and Tomly, sir," one of the operators voiced up without looking up from his screen.

"Naki's dead," Thorn mused, "and Tomly's with Stevens… There's no one piloting the ship?"

Thorn sighed. After the revelation of the alien life forms that were apparently rampant aboard _The Eden_ and the memories they'd stirred, he'd had second thoughts about sending a contingent of men aboard the craft. However, now it seemed he needed to send them, along with a skeleton crew to pilot the craft and get it turned around. There was no hurry at the moment; there was nothing close to the fleet for a few thousand kilometres, so there was no chance of a collision with anything. However, the longer it took to slow down the ship, get it turned around and headed back towards Gamma, the longer it would put on the journey: another hour added to the task could add another two or three _days _to their travel.

_Why can't I live in the future, have something like a faster than light drive? _He wondered silently to himself, before adding a trio of skilled pilots to the squadron boarding the craft.


	11. Chapter 10

X

As soon as Stevens heard the plan from Thorn, he knew it was a good one, knew that there was a boat coming over to get him and his crew off the ship. He had other questions he wanted to ask, like how long it would take for the dropship to reach them, but before he had the chance to open his mouth, the creatures had stormed the barracks.

One minute it had been calm, or as calm as it could be given the current situation: Evelyn was tending to the wounded Marines: those that had been lucky enough to face off against the nightmare creatures and survived, though there were many that had taken a raking claw to the face or chest in the battle, or a putrid stream of their acidic blood had seared their flesh to the bone. Having something to do had given Evelyn something to concentrate on, a task to focus on and keep her mind off the horrors of an alien creature's birth. JT, in the meantime, had rapidly sobered up and was going through the operation of one of the assault rifles with one of the Marines who had been lucky enough to escape the confrontations unscathed.

"You've done well," Thorn face on the screen of the operations console nodded his head slowly. "Kept your cool, despite the shit that's going on around you. And the less-than-perfect guidance you've been given by your commanding officer."

Stevens felt himself smirk. At least there were other people in the forces who thought Cray was an ass, and not just the grunts: Thorn as clearly not impressed with his actions, either.

"Clear a path to the shuttle bay, meet up with my men there. You can liaise with my Gunnery Sergeant there; together the two of you can work out the best course of action to take the ship back, get rid of whatever these things are. Cray will stay here."

_Keeps the uptight shit out of my way_, Stevens thought to himself, but didn't say anything straight away, simply grinning. He knew Cray would be there, watching the transmission, and he hoped he could see that Stevens was overjoyed by the fact he'd been called, more or less, incompetent.

The barracks were suddenly thrown into turmoil as the squeal of metal tearing apart sounded, and Stevens pivoted on his heel, turning to see a seething blanket of darkness seep into the room through a jagged gash in one of the panelled walls, a pair of nightmare creatures slinking in low and hissing as they lunged forwards. A third animal tumbled through the ceiling tiles as it negotiated the maze of overhead conduits and access tunnels, righting itself and hurling aside the shattered debris that surrounded it before screeching and lunging towards Stevens, a pair of clawed hands reaching towards him, talons glistening and thick mucus dripping from its salivating maw. Swinging his weapon around and firing his powerful shotgun, the alien stopped in its tracks as the hail of oversized buckshot slammed into its ridged body like a brick wall. It paused for a second, as if stunned from the blow, while the rest of the Marines opened up with their automatic rifles, spraying the malicious targets with soft lead slugs. The alien lifted its head skywards, screamed an inhuman, trumpeting bellow, then lunged again, forcing him to back away from the console. He fired again and again, using the momentum of the bucking weapon to aid in pumping the slide and pounding round after round into the advancing horde.

A handful of buckshot finally found their mark, smashing through the rictus grin of the demonic creature and rattling around in its armoured skull. It managed a high-pitched whine as it thrashed and dropped to its knees before a bullet from the other side of the room tore into the side of its extended head and smashed out the other, spraying caustic juices across the command console and killing the power as the acid chewed through power relays and circuitry essential to its operation. It quickly blacked out, effectively cutting of their communication with the Marine ship.

Stevens looked around to see his saviour, saw Dawes slip her smoking sidearm into her hip holster and give a slight nod. Stevens returned the gesture, a silent and quick way of acknowledging the fact she'd helped him out, then took a quick check of his situation.

Evelyn had retreated to JT's side, hiding behind him while he skipped the muzzle of his weapon from side to side, trying to pick his targets. He hadn't fired any shots yet, the glowing LED readout on the side of his weapon still showed "95", meaning he was being selective in his targets just as he'd been told. Someone with a rifle on full-auto could quite easily wipe out all the creatures in the room, but they could just as easily take out all the surviving Marines, too.

But the aliens were doing that fine by themselves.

The seriously injured Marines were the first to fall as another seven of the creatures poured into the room through the gaping hole in the wall, moving with an ethereal fluidity as they snared the more seriously injured men and women with talons and tails, pulling them from the room before returning to the fray and lunging at the men more capable of defending themselves with claws extended and snarling teeth, cutting them down with bloody malevolence, tearing open bodies and leaving them to bleed to death while moving on to their next target.

Already, more than half the Marines were gone or taken by the creatures, for whatever reason: Stevens guessed food, but didn't like the connotations behind that: his men being killed outright was bad enough, but being eaten alive was just unthinkable.

"Fallback," he shouted, screaming above the din of gunfire, screaming creatures and dying men. "Seal off the barracks, secure a path to the shuttle bay!"

Those that took their time to acknowledge the order quickly fell to the steel talons of the creatures, while those that continued to lay down overlapping fields of fire and retreat one step at a time stood a better chance of surviving. Stevens knew that the blast door behind him would lead to the corridor that would take him roughly in the right direction of the shuttle bay: it was a couple of levels down, but if they could put a few solid blast doors between themselves and the dark, demonic creatures it might just be enough to let them get to the shuttle bay without loosing too many more people and certainly help get some of the civvies to safety. Reaching the door, Stevens blindly slapped the control panel and waited as patiently as he could while unleashing a hail of buckshot into the advancing horde, the motor of the door groaning and whining as it cycled the barrier open. As soon as there was enough space for a person to fit, Stevens pushed Evelyn and JT through the opening first, then gave the order to his men to retreat.

Three of the Marines towards the front line of defence turned to run towards the door, and were instantly taken down by the creatures as more of them swarmed into the room, pulling themselves in through the gaping hole in the wall and dropping down through the flimsy ceiling tiles, a cacophony of hissing rasps and ear-piercing screeches as the creatures, each larger than a man, loomed ever closer to the Marines, shrugging off the soft-slug caseless rounds as they softened and flattened against their toughened carapaces. Another wave of creatures rushed into the room, a tsunami of needle-sharp teeth and razor-tipped claws that washed over the Marines and drowned them in a sea of their own blood.

"Get out," Stevens shouted over the din of gunfire, screaming creatures and gurgling death cries as he waved to the few remaining men left standing, and watching in desperation as the ceiling above him collapsed and more of the creatures poured into the room… or had some of the crowd flanked around behind them? He couldn't tell, didn't have time to count, and felt lost as he found himself cut off from the rest of the squad while the creatures effectively cut off his squad.

"Get out of here," came a call from the midst of the circling creatures, a voice he recognised as Dawes, snapping off shots with her handgun which seemed to have more affect than the anti-personnel rounds. Stevens lurched forwards, unleashing a salvo of thirty millimetre canister rounds into the backs of the creatures, finally tearing one apart as he opened fire at point blank range. The alien's torso toppled back and its legs fell forwards, twitching spastically, but the devastating shotgun blast hadn't marked its demise: twisting and thrashing on the floor, the legless torso arced its back and hurled its weight around, snapping its jaws as it hauled itself across the floor towards the man who had dealt such an incapacitating blow. Smooth, ice-cold hands wrapped their fingers around his trousers, the creature bringing with it an oily odour laced with rancid meat and bile, and even with its clear disability, the creature managed topple him, clawing its way up his body. He pulled up his shotgun and pushed it into the grinning, salivating jaws of the demonic visage, grimaced as the crystalline teeth of the creature clattered and scrapped the barrel, and pulled the trigger.

It clicked unresponsively: empty!

It batted the weapon away, found purchase on the battered body armour Stevens wore, and hauled itself up his body, the shattered stump of its torso spurting gouts of caustic acid that melted through the deck plates and would surely do the same to his legs, if he let it happen. He tried struggling with the thrashing torso, but its weight and strength were overpowering, and he knew that this was the end, without a doubt.

His life flashed before him in no particular order, scenes from his past that seemed frozen in time, as if he were looking a collection of photographs: summers at his father's beach house; his grandmother's homemade soup made with _real_ ham, not that fake soypro crap; the time he lost his virginity to his high school sweetheart in the back of his brothers car; the time his brother kicked his ass for stealing his car; his first day in boot; his passing out.

He opened his eyes, looked around and saw JT in the open doorway, cradling his pulse rifle and pointing it at him: a quick end, better than letting some alien creature rip him to shreds of dissolve him from the feet up.

The weapon sounded with a thunderous roar, bullets smashing into the swaying head of the creature and smashing into Stevens' body, each impact a dull thump as the bullets rattled the bodies of man and creature alike. The animal hissed, lifted to one side, and Stevens felt hands wrap around the collars of his dented body armour, hauling him across the floor, out the door, then hurled against the corridor wall while the door was shut behind him. Someone was hunkering down by the door, the glowing white flare of a welding torch sputtering is melted the edges of the doorframe, binding it with the door as they hastily sealed it.

"Am I… am I dead?"

"Armour took the impact from the rounds," announced the welder, looking hastily over her shoulder: a face streaked with grime and dirt, a gash running down one side of her face an inch deep, seeping with bright red blood, the liquid almost as red as her now tattered hair. She shifted her weight as she balanced awkwardly on her knees, the legs of her trousers soaked in blood and the armour she wore pitted with scars and ridges that still smoked from their contact with the acid blood; he boots and clamshell greaves releasing the same noxious gas. "If we'd been using HEAP rounds, you'd be fragged: of course, if we'd been using HEAP rounds, a lot more of those fuckers would have went down first."

"Dawes," he murmured, running his hands over the shell of his body armour, gently poking the craters that had appeared in his own protective casing and hissing as his fingers found the flattened, scalding hot rounds that JT had peppered both the alien and Stevens with. He plucked one out, let it drop to the ground, then smiled. "I thought you were done for, thought you were surrounded by those things."

"I was," she spoke as she worked around the frame, methodically. " You blasting that one apart put a hole in the defence long enough to let me break through. I got injured," she said, waving vaguely to her face and legs, "Waded through a shit load of acid. But we got you out, me and the civs."

"No one else get through?"

"No," she muttered, shoulders slumping. "A couple nearly made it. Nearly."

Stevens pulled himself up onto his feet, shakily at first before testing his strength and giving an involuntary shake, more of the mushroomed rounds dislodging from his armour and toppling to the ground. He looked at JT who was looking glumly at the floor, trying his best to ignore the tortured screams inside the room that barely managed to come through the thick door.

"How'd you know my armour'd stop those rounds?"

"I didn't," he answered sullenly. "I just figured…"

"Better dead than food for them," Stevens agreed. "Or whatever they plan on doing with them. No need to explain."

A heavy thud sounded at the door, and both JT and Evelyn jumped back from the barrier, each bringing their weapons up to bear on the panel, while Stevens and Dawes barely flinched.

"Door's five inches of duralloy," Stevens shook his head. "It's a blast door, designed to contain explosions: a bunch of pumped-up creatures aren't going to break through that."

The ferocity of the thumping increased, became accompanied by frantic scrabbling sounds that turned into scratches, then a piercing squeal of metal rending, each noise accompanied by the terrifying roar of the trapped animals.

"I don't think anyone told _them _they can't get through," Dawes muttered, stepping back from the door and checking her weapon. A full clip in her weapon, two more secured to her webbing, and another two magazines for her handgun tucked into one of the stickro-fastened pockets of her trousers: the handgun seemed more effective at the moment, with the soft slugs practically ineffective against the creatures unless they could get a clear shot at its open mouth. Stevens quickly checked his own stock of weapons, found he had a handful of thirty millimetre rounds, but he'd lost his riot gun in his scuffle with the legless alien. He handed the rounds over to Dawes, indicating she should load up the underslung grenade launcher of her pulse rifle with them, before checking JT's own situation.

Other than the salvo of rounds he'd fired at Stevens and the disabled creature, he hadn't fired any rounds, so he still had a clip with close to eighty rounds, and another three clips. He'd also found the time to recover the leather holster and his own handgun to go in it, something he'd obviously done without Stevens knowing. He snatched the assault rifle from JT, knowing that the weapon would do more good if it was in his hands, then looked at Evelyn, at the small sidearm she held limply in her hands, and nodded towards it.

"You know how to use that?"

She nodded slowly. "I've had some training. A little."

"Better than nothing," Stevens said with a shrug. "Try not to hit me or Dawes here, we'll get on like a house on fire. Now, we've got to get out of here, quick. The shuttle bay's about half a mile that way that way, and a couple of levels down: the belly of the beast. Between here and there, there could be any number of those things, and just as many people working their duty shifts, and despite the manufacturers warranty, I don't think that door's going to hold out too long."

He dropped to his knees, pulled out a pair of small metal cylinders no larger than a roll of quarters, then set them on the deck plates, turning their caps a quarter of a turn before backing away from them.

"A little present in case they do escape," he explained, motioning for his group of survivors to follow him: the Bounding-Frags were anti-personnel mines that would launch two meters into the air if they were tripped, before showering the creatures with a spray of shrapnel. It might not be enough to stop them, but it would certainly slow them down.

He hoped.

"C'mon," he urged, skipping quickly away from the blast door as it finally started to bulge in the middle, the structure giving way under the continuous onslaught of the creatures. "I don't want to be here when those things go off, or if those creatures get out."


	12. Chapter 11

XI

The corridors of the lower levels of _The Eden _were eerily deserted, as if the people who worked there knew something was amiss and had fled to the higher levels, out of the way of the quartet of armed men and women and the dark beings that followed them.

The passages themselves were dark and poorly lit, the lower four levels of the ship unofficially referred to by other crew members as The Underground. Pipes ran the length of the corridors at head height, some humming with the power that coursed through the wires protected within, others almost glowing from the superheated gases and liquids they ferried back and forth. The lower levels where home to a lot of complicated machinery involved in the smooth running of the hydroponics ship and the many domes that ran the length of the craft, most of which needed to be maintained almost every hour of the thirty-six hour days the craft operated by.

"Like a ghost ship," murmured JT, carefully peering into the rooms leading away from the main corridor of the deck. Chambers as dark as the corridor greeted him, posts simply abandoned mid-shift: chairs lay on the ground, tables upended, bunks left unmade, and entertainment consoles and decks of cards were left unattended.

'Happens all the time, you know?" JT carried on. "Ships just deserted, left abandoned as soon as something goes wrong. There's hundreds of ships that have been left crewless out there, that's one of the reasons salvage is such a big business at the moment. Me and Naki considered it once, the two of us going in to business. He couldn't get the collateral behind us to get it rolling, though: do you know how much a ship costs? Millions for something that would work as a cargo hauler, which is what we would've needed for…"

"Crew here may not have had time to leave their stations," Stevens cut him off. "You seen those things pull my injured men out of the barracks. They wanted them alive: food, I guess, maybe they like their meat warm."

"They eat us?" JT asked, almost moaning.

"Seen their teeth, right? I don't picture them as the type of creatures that sit and munch on carrot sticks, do you?"

"They eat," murmured Evelyn, passing her handgun from one hand to another. "They eat the flesh. They eat the meat. They eat their way out of us."

"Are you okay?" JT asked, stepping back from the Marines and falling in line with the doctor. "You want to stop for a while?"

"We don't stop," Stevens said aloud. "We keep moving to the shuttle bay, make sure it's clean for the dropship coming. More men, more weapons."

"A show of force," Dawes agreed. "Not that those things will understand."

Far behind them, the echoes of a deep explosion rolled up the corridor, followed quickly by the dying screams of a handful of the nightmare animals. Stevens picked up his pace, urging the group forward into a brisk pace, then a light jog.

"They'll follow us, but slower: They'll think we've ambushed every pressure door, every junction."

"Assuming they think," Dawes pointed out.

"No, they think: they flanked us in the barracks, surrounded us in a classic pincer, they're intelligent, like a pack of lions or something like that, they know how to hunt their prey. Speaking of which, we're there prey, and we need to make tracks. Where's the lift?"

"Left at the next junction," JT said, jerking his head to the left as if to indicate the direction. "Fourth door on the right."

The rest of the journey to the lift was conducted in silence, the four rounding the corner and reaching the doors to the lift. Stevens rapidly hammered the cracked plastic button even after it illuminated a gentle yellow, indicating the system had acknowledged his request and the cage was rolling down the shaft. Behind the sealed door they could hear the screeching of gears, the grinding of the lift as it slowly came to a halt and the doors hissed open, revealing the interior…

And the creature that awaited inside.

At first, JT couldn't recognise the creatures: the few he'd seen had been from the front as they advanced on him, he was yet to see their back: the other side of their distended ribs that met in the centre of its back, its spine a thick ridge of dark bone that flowed along the contours of its back and dripped away from its body into the razor-tipped tail that uncoiled from its body like a deadly snake, swinging lazily back and forth. Four ridged spines rose from its back, made from the same toughened material as the rest of its leathery hide, the organic pipes angling upwards and away from its hulking torso. At the sound of the doors opening it twisted at its waist, glaring eyelessly over its shoulders and opening its dripping mouth with a rasping hiss. With a clatter of resinous claws against metal plating it tried to spin on the spot and bear down on the four people, but the two Marines were quicker than it, lifting their rifles and spraying a salvo of automatic gunfire, crisscrossing its torso and finding its gaping maw. The soft slugs shredded its teeth, spraying fragments of enamel and spatters of ochre across the walls of the cage, its skull tearing open under the clatter of gunfire and erupting in a putrid spray of acid that made the steel structure warp and melt. The creature crumpled to the floor, thrashing wildly and smashing its limbs against the walls, a gurgling wail oozing from its lips.

"I'm not getting in there with that," Dawes grimaced, spitting on dormant creature, "Pull it out."

Stepping gingerly over the carcass, Stevens kicked and prodded the corpse with his boots, grunting with the exertion as he moved the heavy beast, then beckoned to the other three people to join him, Evelyn in particular.

In the corner of the lift, previously hidden from view by the bulk of the creature, there lay a man, his limbs held down by a thick secreted liquid to the walls and floor, a natural glue-like substance the alien must have produced to render him immobile. A stream of acid had struck him when the creature had been taken down, a smouldering wound that had chewed through his thigh vomiting bilious green smoke that reeked of chemicals and melted flesh, but he hadn't screamed when he'd taken the acrid spume: his head was obscured by mass of tumour-like material, a pale yellow pulsating mass of rubbery flesh that enveloped his face and remained in place by the ten-inch fingers that dug into the back of his head. A coil of powerful muscle looped around his neck, constricting as if it sensed the presence of the new people and the danger they could pose to it.

"The fuck is that?" Stevens asked. Everyone shook their head, unable to comprehend the sight before them. "What should we do, medevac this guy? If we can pull him off the wall, I mean."

"No," Evelyn shook her head, warily stepping around the carcass on the floor and into the lift, moving around the prone figure and examining his head. With something to keep her attention and pull her away from the gunplay and life-threatening dangers she was facing, she seemed to be able to focus a lot more, something she'd demonstrated when tending to the injured Marines. "This creature looks like it would leave marks similar to the ones similar to those I found on the missing engineer, and Naki, too. Claw marks at the back of the head, like fingers holding him: rope burns or marks on his neck like he'd been strangled."

"And both of those men had those snake things burst out their stomachs?" Stevens nodded his head. "I'm seeing a pattern. So that thing puts a snake in your guts that eats its way out. What happens if we pull it off?"

"I don't know," Evelyn shook her head. She reached out, gingerly touching the rubbery flesh of one of the bony spines wrapped around the head of the man. The creature responded with a clicking hiss, tensing its legs and constricting its tail even more. The tips of its elongated digits drew blood from the back of his head, and any flesh visible beneath the living mask started to turn purple as the airflow was cut off. Evelyn stepped back, away from the creature, and it seemed to relax a little, the legs and tail slackening off.

"I think if we pull it off, it'll tear his face off."

"Tough choice," Dawes said, stepping in behind Evelyn. "Take it off and it tears their face off. Leave it alone and it'll eventually drill through their ribcage. Either way, they're gonna die."

"I know what way I'd rather go, given the choice," Stevens said, stepping forwards and unsheathing his knife. He grabbed the top of the creature, ignoring its hissing, then pried the blade in between its underside and the mans face, levering it back as he pulled. The man started to spasm and jerk as the creature was peeled away, its protesting hisses becoming louder and louder as its grip on the host became weaker and weaker. With a wet belching noise, it slipped away from the mans face, tail thrashing and dripping thick wet mucus before spewing a fine acidic spray from a number of pores on its fleshy underside. The corrosive mist settled on the mans face, started to melt the flesh down to the bone as he thrashed his head soundlessly from side to side, his limbs and body held in place by the resinous cocoon. Still struggling with the alien arachnid, Stevens could see the flesh of the man bubble and liquefy before his eyes, could see the bone start to crumble and the pulsating pink mass of his brain as it oozed and trickled into the acrid soup that was forming in the hollowed skull.

The man was dead, his end no less graphic and bloody than what would have happened had the creature been allowed to implant its demonic seed, but with the host dead the parasite still had a job to fulfil, and the Marine holding it seemed as likely a candidate as any. Slippery in his grip, the creature started to flip and squirm in Stevens' hands, wrapping its tail around his forearm and trying to crawl up his arm towards his face. He slammed the small creature against the wall of the lift again and again, each blow weakening its grip a little more until it fell limply to the floor. Stevens quickly finished the job by pulling his handgun from his holster and squeezed off a trio of rounds from his handgun, each bullet smashing into the soft, pink underside of the creature and spraying acid blood across the floor. Muttering under his breath, he dropped the knife, its blade now a soft, shapeless mess from the contact with the acid spray, and he looked at his fingertips, the skin there smouldering from the exposure to the defensive measures of the animal. He resisted the urge to put the damaged skin to his mouth – he didn't want his teeth or his tongue to fizz and melt. He opened one of the pouches on his belt, pulled out a sterile dressing and dabbed his fingertips, gritting his teeth while he motioned for JT to enter the lift behind him.

"Is it safe?" he asked, peering into the cage, at the dead bodies and the acid damage to the walls.

"Take your chances in here, or take the stairs," Stevens shrugged his shoulders. "I'm taking the lift. Your _girlfriend's _taking the lift. Make your choice before those things come around the corner."

JT muttered something under his breath and stepped carefully into the lift, warily eyeing the corpses and thumbing the bottom-most button on the control panel, stepping back from doors and watching them slide shut before the cage started its short journey three levels down.

"We get down to the shuttle bay," Stevens said, wrapping the dressing around his hand and readying his pulse rifle again. "Meet up with the dropship there, get some real ammo loaded into these weapons. From there… I guess we'll see what the new guys bring to the table, see if command has any ideas once they've read through those reports I sent through."

"What about us?" Evelyn asked.

"Can't send you back to your normal duties, can we? We'll think of something, don't worry."

The doors to the lift slid open as it came to a shuddering halt at the bottom of the shaft, opening up in a large chamber almost fifty meters square. An airlock lay on the floor in the centre of the chamber, a thick door set flush against the deck plates and surrounded by the yellow and black stripes of hazard tape. The entrance to the elevator was set in one corner, beside an office area made from a skeletal structure of steel overlaid with sheets of reinforced class. In the event of a breech or airlock malfunction, it could protect someone from the vacuum of space, and was where the deck sergeant could normally be found when he was on duty. In the opposite corner of the hangar to the office, a quartet of yellow exoskeletons stood a silent vigil over the units that housed their recharge sockets.

The shuttle bay was eerily quiet and deserted: no deck sergeant, and no maintenance team stripping down and cleaning the powerloaders. Although they could be hiding behind one of the barrels of jet fuel or engine parts, JT thought that would be unlikely.

"Well, we got here," Stevens announced, walking into the office and dusting off the seat before sitting down and tending to his wounds. Dawes followed and sat on the seat beside him, allowing Evelyn to look over her cuts and burns, doing what she could with what little medical supplies they carried and salvaging anything else from the emergency first aid kit stored in the office area. "We didn't clear a path, but we got here. Thank Christ."

"There's no shuttles here," JT said, feeling his shoulders slump. "Don't we have some onboard?"

"There was one," Stevens shrugged his shoulders. "Cray took it over to one of the other ships a few days ago. Were you thinking of evacuating on your own?"

"It might've crossed my mind," he admitted. "With those creatures between us and the rest of the ship we're cut off: we couldn't get anyone else here, could we?"

"Well, we'll work on that when the rest of the Marines get here," Stevens was confident that the men and women approaching the ship would bring superior firepower with them that would help turn the tide of the battle; he knew that if his men in the barracks had been loaded with HEAP rounds, then the story would be different, and there'd be more than just two Marines and a pair of civvies to greet the cavalry.

While Stevens contemplated this, the still of shuttle bay was broken as a klaxon blared to life and a series of yellow strobes that ran the length of the bay blinked to life, warning everyone who may have been in the hangar that there was an incoming shuttle, and the automatic docking procedure was about to start.

"Stay in the office here," Stevens warned them as he stood guard by the open door, panning his rifle from side to side. "You don't want to get caught in the way of any machinery out there. Last thing we want is for the doc to have to reattach an arm."

They all watched from the safety of the office while dormant machinery running the length of the ceiling shuddered to life and the airlock on the floor cracked opening, giving a loud hiss as the atmosphere within the sealed chamber below mixed with the rest of the ship and equalised. Two pairs of mechanical arms, each tipped with a large flat clamp, lowered themselves into the opening, then with a deafening clang, grabbed the docked vessel and hauled it from the airlock. As the dropship rose into view like the head of a sea serpent crowning a wave, its underside opened up, a trio of support struts unfolding from their housing and the main ramp whining open like a mouth. The airlock doors cycled shut and the mechanical arms on the ceiling trundled along their tracks, pulling the vehicle away from the lock and setting it down on the deck beside it. As soon as it touched down, the Marines within the vehicle started pouring out the main ramp: all wearing the same shell-type armour and uniform as Stevens and Dawes, most armed with the same type of weapons: a couple carried heavier weapons supported by a hydraulic support integrated into their armour, lengthy weapons they swung smoothly from side to side as they marched across the open hanger to the small office.

The soldier leading the squad didn't carry a weapon in his hand, but he had an incinerator slung over one shoulder and a pulse rifle over the other. He nodded to the four people in the room, dismissed all formalities with Stevens and Dawes as they went to salute.

"Stevens, what's the deal? Where's the rest of the squad?"

"This is it," he waved to Dawes. "Wiped out, they stormed our barracks. Softlsugs don't do shit unless you get them in the mouth, and canister rounds only work point-blank. Please, tell me you've got something that packs a little more of a punch…"

"Intel says they bleed acid. Is it safe to spray that around near the hull? It might cause a breech."

"I'd rather suck vacuum then have my face chewed off by one of those things. Or taken alive for… whatever."

"For those things… those spiders," Evelyn murmured, slowly trying to piece things together in her mind. "The spiders make the snakes, then the snakes… the snakes… they grow?"

"Understood," Gunnery Sergeant Green nodded, looking warily at Evelyn as she continued to mutter things to no one in particular. He turned to look at one of the soldiers standing behind him. "Private, get these two Marines issued with some armour piercing rounds. Secure all entry points to the hangar: get a couple of people strapped into those loaders and stack as much machinery as you can to block those other doors. You!"

JT attention, previously focussed on the hustle and bustle of the Marines as they rushed back and forth across the hanger, snapped back to Green as he clicked his fingers and pointed at him. "Me?" he asked, bewildered.

"You're the pilot, right?"

"A pilot, yeah," he nodded in agreement.

"I need you to brief the vom-com jockeys over there on the ship and its bridge: access codes, login protocol, any quirks the system may have that might impede their operation of the ship."

"Vom-coms?" JT frowned, looking around for anything that might vaguely fit that description. "What are they doing to the ship?"

"We're turning around, going back to Gamma, leaving the fleet and getting this infestation sorted out. Pull up in dry dock, I guess. We gotta get there, and that's why we've brought the vom-com jockeys."

"Vom-com jockey's an abbreviation of vomit-comet jockey. What us grunts call most of the pilots: drop-happy speed freaks that like nothing more than the roar of an afterburner," Stevens felt he had to explain to military slang to the civilians if only to keep them in the loop and up to speed.

"So I'm a vom-com jockey?" JT mused aloud.

"No, you're a civ," Stevens shook his head, turning his back on JT. "Don't go getting delusions of grandeur. How do you plan on getting them to the bridge? It was almost wall-to-wall in the barracks; Christ knows how you're planning on getting through there. Better weapons are one thing, but it's best not to get too cocky."

"What about the airshafts? Move a squad through the vents, up the ship and directly into the bridge. It'll take some time…"

"We got the shafts sealed off before it all kicked off," Stevens shook his head. "Keep those things confined as much as we could. At least, that was the theory behind it all. Didn't take into account the resourcefulness of the bastards."

"Sound enough theory. Would've done the same thing myself," Green nodded his head. "Limits our options in getting to the bridge, though. Anyone feel like a skin-crawl?"

"Three miles of ship hull and open space doesn't sit well with me," Stevens shook his head, knowing that although some of the men there would be able to do a spacewalk, there would be others who couldn't. "I wouldn't like to see the vom-coms slip into an enviro-suit, too. Poor bastards wouldn't know what to do in hard vacuum without a cockpit surrounding them."

"So we've secured a beachhead with nowhere to go," Green nodded. "Interesting. Ask that pilot if there's any other way he knows of to get into the bridge: any way we can get those vom-coms through."

"No way through," JT shook his head: he'd been eavesdropping on the conversation between the corporal and the gunnery sergeant, and couldn't help but blurt his answer out without being invited to throw in his response. "But… I mean, there's more than just one way to skin a cat, you know what I mean?"

"Not sure I do, civ," Green shook his head.

"You're wanting to turn us around, get us back to Gamma where we can get deloused or whatever to get rid of these things. All I'm saying is, the bridge isn't the only way to move this craft."

"Do I have to beat this out of you?"

"Engineering," JT shook his head as he returned to the admin office of the hanger. Green and Stevens followed closely behind him as he booted up the terminal there, accessing the schematics of the lower decks of the hydroponics deck. He highlighted one section of the decks, zoomed in, then stabbed a button that generated a three dimensional representation of the ship. The shuttle bay they were currently in flashed red, and a beam of light the same colour snaked through the layout to a large chamber near the rear of the craft. "We can get to the engineering deck from here. Minimal controls as far as navigation goes, but we can get there and shut down the main engines, slam on a little reverse thrust to bring us to a complete stop. From there… hell, I don't know, maybe some kind of tractor beam or tug to pull us back, at least until we can get back into the bridge."

"And you can get us to engineering from here?"

"Conduits, access tunnels, small service corridors. I'm not saying it's going to be a cakewalk, but it'll be easier than trying to fight our way through those things, weapons or not."

"And where do we come out?" Stevens asked, warily eyeing the route as he rotated the hologram. "Engineering's a big place."

"Control buffers are on the first sub-level of the engineering deck, but we're on the lowest level, we'll come out at the bottom of the Inferno: we'll have to make our way up."

"That's not good," Stevens shook his head. "The first guy who went missing, who I assume was the first person to be infected by one of those spider-things, they found him on the outskirts of the Inferno. Wherever these things came from, it's slap bang in the middle of there."

"Like demons from Hell," Evelyn nodded her agreement, standing at the doorway to the admin office. "The spiders make the snakes and the snakes grow and grow and mature."

"What she's saying makes sense," Stevens nodded, despite the dirty look Green was giving her. "She's the first person aboard that encountered these things, and I think she's right: everything seems linked, it just sounds crazy. I don't like the idea of marching into the middle of what could be a hot-zone just to turn off the engines. Isn't there any other way to get to any other controls?"

JT shook his head slowly. "When you're pulling as many late shifts as I do, there's not much to do other than read a lot. The only reason I know about this little trick is it's in one of the operational manuals. If we ever get boarded by a raider party, we slam the brakes on and disable the ship until we get picked up by a Marine rescue party."

"Then we've got no choice," Green shrugged his shoulders. "Taking vom-coms through service tunnels or teaching them how to space-walk: I know what I'd rather do. That proximity to the reactor and engines, what are we looking at by way of collateral damage? A stray shot or anything like that."

"Can your rounds punch through the hull of this craft?" JT asked, motioning vaguely to the weapons they carried. "The casing around the reactor core's more than twice as thick as that, there's a lot of power in there that has to be contained."

"A grenade wouldn't dent the hull: we should be fine with our rounds. Doesn't mean we need to go nuts, we'll check our targets."

"There could be people down there, too," Stevens warned. "They took the injured alive, and if there's any chance we can save them, then I want to make sure we do just that. And if it's too late… then they're better off dead."

"Not sure I follow," Green absentmindedly thumbed three grenades into the launcher attached to his rifle before hauling back on the heavy slide, snapping a round into the breech with a satisfying ratchet sound.

"There's these spider things, we found one in the lift attached to some poor bastards face. We pulled it off, and it sprayed him with acid, killed him outright. If we left the spider on him, it would have put a serpent-like creature down his gullet, which would eventually tear its way out of his rib cage. This much we've seen evidence of, and when they stormed the barracks, those creatures made a point of pulling away the injured: not taking them out to eliminate a potential threat, but _removing_ them from the battle. Why? I can only assume it's to let more of those spiders get to them, to make more serpents."

"Now you're making as much sense as the retard doctor there," Green snorted before his jaw was rocked by a brutal punch, his head slamming to one side and bouncing off the wall as JT squared off against him, more than ready to throw another punch if the need arose. Stunned by the blow, Green staggered back a little, his weapon clattering to the desk as it fell from his hands. An entourage of Marines appeared behind him, weapons drawn and pointing at JT's chest, but Green waved them back from the confrontation.

"Got some balls, civ," he glowered.

"Promised a Marine a long time ago I'd keep an eye out for Evie, and I've laid out bigger men for less than what you just called her. Try doing something like that again," JT growled, the sudden change in his character more than startling: Stevens was a surprised as anyone else, and noted that Evelyn was just as taken aback by his reaction. "Go on, I fucking _dare _you."

Green stood stoic before JT, rubbing at his jaw, then called over his shoulder.

"Give this ballsy fucker a weapon. Civ just offered to take point when we go through to engineering."


	13. Chapter 12

XII

JT watched in silence as the Marines went about their business in the hanger, the huge yellow exoskeletons clumping their way from side of the chamber to the other, carrying heavy loads of equipment and material that would be used in one way or another to secure the shuttle bay from outside interference by the creatures. Grated deck plates had been hauled up from walkways and welded in place over sealed doors, a modern-day portcullis over a locked drawbridge, while elsewhere in the bay any open ventilation shaft had its entrance blocked by a barrel or a crate, each obstruction hastily welded to the floor or the wall. Within an hour, there were a number of discarded portable cutting and welding torches lying in the centre of the room, their ends glowing white hot but their internal fuel supply having been long-since depleted, and the Marines were now making slow but steady progress with the larger solidox welding gear used for repairing dropships or fixing rips in the hulls of larger craft.

Of the many different ways into the room, only two had been sealed up with the makeshift seals: the large double-doors that opened up into the elevator JT and his friends had entered the hanger through, and a smaller hatch barely big enough for one of the armoured Marines to enter through, let alone the large ebony nightmares that were loose in the ship. The smaller door was guarded by five marines, all but one equipped with a modified pulse rifle with an extended drum magazine, capable of holding more than double the capacity of a normal magazine. The fifth person carried a heavy machine gun attached to his hip by a gyroscopic mount, the smartgun swinging smoothly from side to side as he covered the hatch with relative grace and ease, despite the bulk and weight of the weapon. He didn't wear the same cumbersome armour or helmet as the other men and women, and was quite vocal on several occasions how he was more of a badass ground pounder because he didn't go in for that "tin can crap" his counterparts wore.

A trio of sentry cannons guarded the larger doors to the elevators, heavy duty automated turrets that cycled back and forth in a fixed arc, forming an overlapping field of fire that could detect and open fire on any creatures, should they breach the elevator itself in a bid to get to the Marines stationed within. Capable of operating a number of different mounted weapons, Green had elected to use the experimental incinerator units: with the choice of either flames or bullets, and the potential of the lift doors becoming the scene of an impromptu shooting gallery, something that wouldn't make the creatures bleed as much was more favourable.

"Are we secure in here?" JT finally said, glancing over at Stevens as Evelyn finished tending to his wounds. With a full field kit provided by one of the medics in the squad, she had more equipment to work with and could concentrate more on the job at hand, applying salves to burns and wrapping cuts and suspected breaks in bandages and braces.

"As secure as we are in any other room anywhere else on the ship," Stevens shrugged, watching as the Marines continued to work around him. Both he and Dawes were considered as walking wounded – injured, but not out of the fight by a long shot – but they were more valuable in a firefight than the securing of the bay, and were ordered to get the medical attention they needed. That didn't mean that Green wasn't keeping an eye on them from across the hanger, glaring warily at them while one of his own corporals reported on the progress of securing the room.

"Green's got a plan, too," voiced Dawes as she readjusted her helmet: with her hair falling outside regulations, she stood out just as much as much as the civilians. "If they breech the hanger, we retreat to the lift of the access tunnels, seal them off, then remotely open both airlocks, suck them out into space. Can't survive without oxy, am I right?" She raised her fist slightly, and Stevens tapped it lightly with his own fist.

"Fuckin 'a," he nodded in agreement. "Suck the bastards clean out into the void."

"Looks like he's got all bases covered," JT resented the fact Green seemed to know what he was doing, and his resentment clearly came through in his tones.

"Don't get stressed out, civ," Stevens shook his head. "He's right, you've got some cajones on you to try and start a brawl with a sergeant on account of some girl. Don't take it as an insult: any other civ would be sitting in the dropship right now, waiting for the all clear to be evaced. The fact he's taking you in – Christ, you're practically leading us there – twinned with the fact you've already proven yourself to be worth something in a serious firefight means he's obviously impressed with your ability to look after yourself. And others. You've saved me, saved her," he said, waving to Evelyn as she finished off dressing his wounds.

"Evelyn," she muttered, absentmindedly. "My name's Evelyn."

"I know what your name is," Stevens shook his head. "It doesn't matter."

"In all honesty, I'd rather I _was _sitting in the damn dropship. At least I'd be safe."

"Can they really force him to lead them?" Evelyn asked. "I mean he's not one of them. One of you, I mean, he's not a soldier."

"I'll be okay," JT nodded. "Just have to keep a level head."

"Normally, I'd say no: unless the Marines are in a policing role, they can't order a civilian or put one directly in the line of danger. However, these aren't really normal circumstances, more like a war or an invasion. And in an invasion or a war, the rules can change without warning."

"You ready, Civ?" Green called from over the bay, motioning towards the small hatch under the supervision of the quintet of Marines. "Lets get this show moving: we were in the middle of a game of craps before coming over here, and I was on a winning role: I don't want to lose any of that pay I'm owed."

Stevens hauled himself up from the collection of pipes he'd been resting on and slapped JT's shoulders as he egged him on. "C'mon, mouse, lead us to the cheese."

"Don't I get any armour, any protection?"

"You're lucky you're allowed that," Stevens nodded towards the pulse rifle JT carried. "Plus, you've got a squad of the fleet's finest with you, what other protection could you possibly want?"

"Change of plan," Green announced as the quartet approached him, holding up a hand to halt the squad advancing. "Civ, you and your girl stick to the middle of the pack: I'm going to have Mallard take point, sweep the corridors before we follow him. Stevens, you and Dawes are Tail-end Charlie, watch our backs."

"Got it, Sarge," Stevens nodded, then winked to Evelyn. "Keep him out of trouble, we'll meet up at the other end."

"Okay men, listen up," Green bellowed, his voice echoing in the vast chamber he stood in. All the Marines turned to face him, over thirty people including the pilots and civilians that were waiting patiently in the bay. "We've got a couple of briefs, we know the tunnels are going to be tight, barely big enough to go through in pairs, and we also know that these creatures are strong, and quick. They can come from the ceilings, come from the floors: they could come from any angle, so don't be surprised if they come at us from both ends. The civ's going to lead us to Engineering, he says it can get hot as hell there, so don't be afraid to unfasten a button or two if the heat gets too much. IR won't show shit down there, so dump any unnecessary crap we don't need to carry.

"Mallard's taking point as squad machine gunner, I need two men behind him with rifles and trackers, another two behind them with ammo loads. Standard formations following that: cross your fields of fire and hold off on grenades unless the tunnels open up. Keep your heads down, and don't shoot us," he finished off, addressing JT and Evelyn at the end of his briefing. A squad of nine Marines formed up at the small hatch, falling in line behind Mallard, the man with the smartgun who had been so vocal about not wearing as much armour as the rest of the infantry around him. He was much larger up close, his impressive bulk rippling with power as he stood impatiently in front of the door, grinding his teeth and adjusting the mission camera attached to his pair of safety goggles that covered his eyes. His skin was dark, his skull shaved impeccably smooth, and a fine bead of sweat rolled down the back of neck, staining the olive T-shirt he wore with a trickle of sweat. He nodded to himself, hoisted his weapon as if he carried it without the aid of the gyroscopic arm, then stood still, waiting for the hatch to be opened.

"Don't worry, civs," he called out to JT and Evelyn as they arranged themselves into the centre of the squad. "I got you covered. Just keep me right, and get me to a couple of those bugs if you can," he grinned, showing yellowed teeth that were missing more than one, clearly casualties of fistfights from his tours of duty. He was clearly proud of these trophies and mementos, as it cost very little to get minor work like that fixed.

"Can't believe he let the 'Roid Rage go first," chuckled one of the men behind JT. "We'll never get to tag any bad guys ourselves with him up front."

"Cool it," whispered the man beside him. "I hear this is all just a drill, anyway, something to keep us occupied. Soon as it's over, I'm going to see if I can find myself some civilian pussy before we go back over: Marine women ain't nothing but butch bitches or dykes, Sometimes I need a little smooth to go with the rough, if you now what I mean."

Evelyn spun, glared at the pair, but none of them seemed to draw back from her withering stare: one smiled, the other winked and made a pursing gesture with his lips. "Can't argue about the view from here, though. I could always settle for a little doctor-dicking, you know what I mean?"

"Hermes, King," Green snapped, having to throw himself into the melee about to erupt between JT and the pair of soldiers. "You stow your shit and cool your cocks at the back to squad: you're covering our flanks now, Stevens, get you and your woman up here. Keep an eye on your friend here; make sure he doesn't get himself into trouble."

Hermes and King stepped out of line and trudged backwards, away from JT but keeping their eyes locked with his, neither man willing to break off their glare. Stevens forced his way between them and he and Dawes took their position, making a point of emphasizing his movements and barging into them with his shoulders, ensuring they turned around and stepped to the back of the line-up.

"Can't play well with other kids, can you?" Stevens grinned, rolling his eyes.

"Lousy fucker wants to keep his mouth shut," JT said angrily, making sure his voice was loud enough to carry to the rear of the formation.

"You got a lot of piss boiling inside you," Stevens shook his head. "I like this side of you. You got balls."

"I don't like it," Evelyn muttered to herself. Not loud enough for Stevens to hear, but JT could hear well enough.

"All right, we're moving out," Green's voice bellowed. "Mallard, take us in."

"It's about fucking time," spat Mallard, nodding to one of the Marines as he pulled open the sealed hatch and revealed the dark tunnel within. "Watch your step. It's dark as shit in here."

Lights attached to armour and fixed to guns hummed to life as they were activated in unison and the squad slowly began to push on into the cramped tunnel.

The walls pressed in around JT and Evelyn as they marched into the darkness, each side lined with thick pipes and bundles of wires strapped together and held down with thick metal clamps. The dullest of light found its way into the corridor through the grilled ceiling above them, dim emergency lighting that was barely bright enough to pick out the contours of the corridor. The lamps the Marines carried cut through the darkness with piercing shafts of brilliant white, picking out the details of the enclosed space: pipes covered with fine layers of condensation and patches of corrosion, the drip-drip-drip of water echoing in the confines of the still tunnel; the audible hum of power that pulsed through the wiring surrounding them, and the heat that they generated. Less than a fifty meters into the tunnel, and the temperature had already hiked a couple of degrees, and each step seemed to bring it closer and closer to the intolerable. Somewhere along the corridor a pipe must have burst, giving birth to a thick miasma that oozed across the floor, barely a couple of inches above the ground, and a stale, organic stench permeated the air.

"Junction coming up," Mallard called from the front of column.

"Head left," JT announced, accepting a headset from Stevens and slipping the device over his ear. "Then there should be a sealed bulkhead on the right after that: we need to go through that."

"Copy that," Mallard growled. "Left, through the sealed bulkhead… we may have a problem."

"What's happening, soldier?" Green's voice carried from the rear of the squad and over JT's headset, almost in unison.

"Sealed bulkhead isn't sealed. It ain't even there."

"Bullshit, it's there," JT butted into the exchange. "I know it's there."

"Used to be," Mallard said, and from the front of the line, JT could see him shrug his shoulders. "Ain't now, though. The seal for the door's there, but the hatch isn't."

"They tore it off?" JT wondered aloud.

"Or through it," Mallard offered as he continued through the opened hatchway. As JT reached the opening, he paused a couple of seconds to examine the seal and the frame surrounding it. Splashed with corrosive liquids and spattered in thick, stringy mucus, it looked like it had been completely removed, but couldn't explain why.

"Move it," Stevens nodded, tapping JT's head with back of his hand. "There used to be a door, now there isn't. Big mystery, we'll sort it out later. "

"Yeah, right," JT said, not entirely convinced as he picked up his pace and rejoined Evelyn by her side. "Later."

The squad travelled for almost twenty minutes, the cramped corridor twinned with the bulky armour and weapons of the Marines meaning it took them longer to negotiate some areas where pipes crossed their path, until Mallard gave a sigh of relief, then a soft laugh.

"Tunnel's finally opened up," he said, the relief in his voice sounding like he was smiling has he made the comment. "'Bout time."

"There's a few of these chambers between us and the bottom of Engineering," JT nodded as he and Evelyn emerged into the chamber and watched as the other soldiers spread out in a cordon across the chamber. He wiped his brow with the back of his sleeve, the arm of his jacket coming away covered in a thick mixture of sweat and grime. "It'll give us a chance to stretch and rest up before we move on. The next one's another two hundred meters on, then we need to take the left branch from there."

"It'll also give us somewhere to fall back to if we need to break out the big guns," Green nodded. "So far, so good. Mallard, secure the exit: King and Hermes, make sure nothing sneaks up on us. The rest of you, hydrate and swap, take turns while we all get prepared for the next leg of our journey."

He approached JT and Evelyn, covering the mouthpiece of his head set and nodded solemnly to them. "You're doing good so far," he said quietly, assuring them, before uncovering the microphone once more. "It's only gonna get hotter, so make sure you're not going to overheat. Make sure those motion sensors are working, too, I don't want anything getting the drop on us."

"I've got something up here," Mallard shouted from his sentry position, waving over to Green but not taking his eyes off the corridor ahead of him, nor his finger off the firing stud of his weapon. Every Marine turned to face him, weapons snapping up and waiming in his direction. "Get the brains of the civ operation up here, too."

"He means you," Green barked, pointing to Evelyn as he rushed over to see what Mallard was talking about. Bewildered, she stumbled forwards, JT in tow, he steps becoming increasingly slower as the object Mallard's light illuminated came into view.

A hideous sculpture made by a crazed artist, a human figure had been attached to the wall of a small antechamber leading back into another cramped corridor. Surrounded by dark resinous material that glistened in the glare of the halogen lamp, the figure had been welded in place by the grim organic material. Loops of the material surrounded his limbs and upper torso, like distended intestines dipped in a hardening compound and sprayed with glistening slime, supporting the weight of his body as it leaned forwards, almost as if he had been frozen in the middle of peeling away from the wall. The texture of the wall around him was equally as alien as the restraints that surrounded him: organic swirls and pipes of a structure that seemed to blend perfectly from organic to inorganic in a bizarre, fluid moment. The shapes of the structure surrounding the person were reminiscent in both shape and shade of the creatures themselves, and for a moment he thought they'd come across a giant creature in the middle of eating a person alive.

The man was dead, though. Blood had sprayed across his face and chest, and the ruptured cage of his ribs had burst outwards. Fragments of shattered ribs were scattered across the ground and around the thick, fleshy roots that spanned the floor; bloodied candy corn smashed and torn from the piñata glued to the wall. Shredded organs dripped out the gaping hole, slick with blood and bile chewed in some place, and the look of pain and terror etched on the face of the main told the true story of the agony he had went through in his final hours. His bloody tongue lolled from his face, bitten halfway through as if he had tried to bite it and swallow it to end his suffering.

On the ground at the base of the structure there lay a large, grey-green leathery pod, the apparent origins of the fleshy, slime-coated roots that snaked across the floor. Its top had peeled back in four large, fleshy petals, coated in the same translucent matter. Beside the spent egg, the carcass of an eight-legged creature lay dormant, its legs curled up on itself and its tail trailing lazily away from it.

"Just like we told you," JT said, but took no pleasure in being right. Instead, he watched as Evelyn pushed her way to the front of the crowd, peered into the eyes of the dead man and examined the opened chest cavity. A hushed silence fell over the Marines, the only sound that could be heard the steady pulsing hum of the engines of the craft around them. Green was the first to speak as he pushed past Mallard and took place at the head of the squad.

"Pull that poor bastard off the wall, tag him and bag him, then we push on. We'll pick him up on the way back."

Reluctantly, two Marines stepped forwards and chipped away at the hardened resin that surrounded the man until enough of the matter had been removed and they could pull him from his encrusted tomb. He dropped lifelessly to the ground, then quickly vanished beneath a sheet of plastic that the Marines engulfed him in. With a tracker beacon fixed to the body bag, it was pushed to one side, waiting to be picked up by the squad on its returning journey.

"There's more further on," Mallard hissed as he panned the beam from his lamp into the darkness of the corridor beyond the macabre totem, the structures beyond glistening as the light played over their twisted and reformed surfaces.

"Move up, secure the area," Green ordered, and Mallard took a step forwards, his weapon slowly dancing from one human form to another as the details of the captives became clearer.

Four in total, each had been glued to the wall using the same secretions, the mix of organic and inorganic almost indecipherable as bulkhead merged with the baroque alien structure: limbs had been twisted, bent or broken to fit in place around malformed secretions and parts of equipment, the ergonomic requirements of the human body clearly not taken into account when they had been fixed into place. Four pods lay empty on the ground, each with their fleshy lips peeled back and surrounded by a network of roots.

Of the four people, two had already been used: their chests were ruptured and shredded, arterial spray covering the floor and wall around them, nothing but husks that had served their purpose. A third body was in the process of becoming impregnated, the spider-like creature having engulfed their head with its elongated fingers and secured in place by the powerful tail coiled around their neck. The fourth seemed to be in the limbo state between the two: the desiccated husk of the crab-creature lay at his feet, but his chest was intact, rising slowly as he laboriously breathed in and out, his torso twisted around a round vent opening that could have been either part of the ship or part of the alien hive. The opening seemed to go on forever into the darkness beyond, but no one seemed to fix their attention on this: while the man still breathed, there could be chance he was going to be okay.

With Mallard standing guard, Green rushed forwards, almost dragging Evelyn as they approached the man, moving softly and carefully so they didn't make too much noise as they stepped over roots and pools of sludge and slime.

"Is he awake?" Green asked as Evelyn gingerly examined the man, keeping back from him as she played the beam of a penlight across his features.

"Hmm," he man responded himself, his head rolling forward a couple of inches before the resin coating his head snagged at his scalp and split the flesh. "Yeah… I'm… I'm awake."

"Get him down from there," snapped Green, stepping forwards with his own blade and starting to chip away at the restraints that bound his arms. "Get him down."

"Don't!" the man yelled, a wild look in his eyes as he glared at the Marine, obviously aware of his fate: the three other people plastered to the wall around him was a testament to both his past and present.

"We can help," Green said, though he didn't sound convinced as the sound of an organ slipping out an exposed rib cage and slapping into the pool of gore beneath one of the dead bodies startled him: all the soldiers lifted their weapon and spun to face it, but none of them opened fire: training won out over nerves. Barely.

"I can… I can feel it… moving,' he grimaced as the snake within his chest shifted, its alien bulk displacing his heart and stomach, stifling a cough as his lungs were squeezed slightly. "It's in me. Christ, I can feel it…"

A violent shudder passed through his body, and with the convulsion came a barking cough, harsh and grating that produced a spray of bloody phlegm. It trickled down his chin, rivulets of crimson and ochre gore that remained fixed to his skin.

"She's a doctor," Green urged, motioning towards Evelyn with a nod of his head. "We can take it out."

"Too late," the man grinned. "I'm… I'm having a baby!" He laughed, as harsh a bark as his cough and equally as productive as far as bloodied saliva was concerned. With a wild look in his eyes, he fixed Green with a glare, but then seemed to lose focus as his gaze drifted beyond him. "Is this… what it feels… feels like to have one? He moves, he… he hurts me… but I'm reminded that I'm… I'm alive. For now…"

"He's fucking lost it," Mallard barely looked over his shoulder as he focused his attention on the other end of the corridor, and the darkness that loomed ominously in the near distance.

"Is this… what it feels like?" the man continued, before snapping his gaze to Evelyn and fixing her with the same maddening gaze as he had green. Almost shouting now, he screamed: "You're the fucking doctor! Does it always hurt?"

Evelyn jumped at his sudden outburst, and JT instinctively stepped forwards, his hands tightening around the weapon he held, but Stevens quickly snagged his collar and pulled him back.

"You gonna wail on some half-mad bastard strapped to a wall with a creature in his gut that's about to pop just because he shouted? Cool it, civ," he said calmly, then looked at the man fastened into the structure. He spoke up to him, for what good it was. "How many of them are there? Where'd they go?"

"Them?" he whispered, nodding his head more. The resin pulled more hair from his scalp as he moved, though in the state of delirium he was in, did didn't act like he felt it. "Yes, them… hundreds," his voice tailed off into a whisper, so quiet that Stevens had to step closer to hear his incoherent ramblings to see if he could gleam any knowledge from him. "The darkness, it hides them. The walls hide them. They watch us now, watch for their baby, Did… did you know I was pregnant? They love me… they all do… I'm the mother… father… of their brother."

"He's fucking gone," Mallard warned again. "I know crazy, and that fucker's crazy."

"Hundreds," he warned again. "Hundreds of them. Men and animals and animals and men… they're all the parents… all feel it… it moves!"

He gritted his teeth once more, grimacing as the creature rolled around inside him chest, then blinked away the tears of pain.

"It moves," he whispered again. "My beautiful… beautiful baby… moved."

"There's nothing you can do for him?" murmured Green as he turned away from the deranged man and pulled Evelyn aside.

"Even if we got him down," she shook her head, "I couldn't... wouldn't even know where to begin."

The deliberation was cut short as the man on the wall screamed again, this time his gut-wrenching agony coming out in a gurgling scream as blood frothed from his cracked lips. He spat a wad of thick blood laced with bile onto the ground, shuddered and screamed again, his burbling cry continuing as the ferocity of his scream ripped through his vocal chords and shredded his throat: he thrashed from side to side, his limbs cracking and popping as they tried to break free from the secreted structure. His bones snapped and gave before the prison around him did, and with a final, agonising scream that rattled off into the dark confines of the tight maintenance corridors…

He stopped moving: eyes glazed over, bloody spittle hanging from his mouth in thick rivulets of gore-streaked mucus, chest barely moving as his final breaths escaped from his tortured body.

"Feel it… move… see… brothers!"

He managed a final, drawn-out guttural belch, then fell deathly silent. All eyes were fixed on the body, and five seconds passed without any further activity from the organic wall fixture. JT felt himself relax, thinking either the creature wasn't ready to come out, or that maybe – thankfully – the man had just expired. He could see that Evelyn had visibly relaxed, too.

Which made the bloody eruption of the toothed worm that ripped through the sternum of the man that much more startling, even though deep down, JT was still expecting it.

Gnashing its tiny, metallic-looking teeth as it slithered through the quagmire of gore that slewed from the opened body cavity; it hissed a high-pitched scream before attempting to sidle into the hole in the hive structure surrounding the fresh corpse. Weapons that had been snapped up during the initial convulsions tracked to the side, trying to follow the quick-moving infant, but Mallard was the first to fire, the staccato of gunshots a different timbre than the pulse rifles, and the powerful rounds found their mark, smashing through the body of the snake with unnerving accuracy and destroying it with brutally accurate shots that took out head, chest and tail. It flopped lifelessly to the floor, the acrid spray dousing deck and structure alike: where the putrid liquid found metal, it smoked and sizzled as it corroded the plate: where it struck the alien structure, it simply splashed and dripped down the wall, until it came to rest in a shallow pool forming in the uneven sculpture.

The retort of the gunfire hadn't even died away before another sound erupted, a shrill and undulating tone that beeped, almost _sang_, as the motion sensors half the squad carried burst to life in a synchronised trill. They were lifted up, spun around, moved from side to side as they tried to get a fix on the location of the movement. Some slapped the boxes they carried before consulting others in hushed tones.

"Don't make me ask," Green muttered, grabbing the tracker from the closest Marine and glaring at the readout. Pale blue lines illuminated the small black screen, an arc pulsing from one side of the screen to another as the machine emitted an invisible sensory wave. Any movement from something not wearing an IFF tag the Marines wore would be detected by the devices, and would show up on the screen as a white shapeless blob, with an indication as to how far the source of movement was. The screen was blank.

"Faulty machinery," he growled to himself.

"Everyone's picked something up at the same time," Stevens took a tracker from another soldier. "There was something, there had to be. One machine can throw out an odd ghost reading but seven of them?"

"Interference from the engines?" JT asked, his arm wrapped around Evelyn: was he comforting her after the horrific birth and sudden gunfire, or was it for his own benefit? She had seen more of these visceral births than he, maybe she was starting to get used to it. Not that it was something normal you could take in your strides. "Strong EM fields, maybe?"

"I doubt it," Stevens shook his head. "These things can work in any environment with an atmosphere. It's thick and humid here, but not enough to start screwing with these things."

"I'm inclined to agree," Green was reluctant to admit it, but he nodded his head as he talked. "Look sharp, people, those gun shots are sure to bring unwanted attention."

"Unwanted my ass," Mallard grinned. "I want to meet these fuckers and let my old friend here teach them a few new things," he crooned, stroking the lengthy weapon attached to his hip.

"A smartgun's only as intelligent as its operator," one of the Marines to the rear of the squad said, deliberately projecting his voice so it reached the point man. "Couldn't teach a fish to swim."

"I taught your sister a few things last night," Mallard grinned as he swung the barrel of his weapon slowly from one side to another, hoping the weapons automatic tracking would pick something; anything up in the murky corridor ahead of him. "Your momma, too."

"I spoke to my momma, said she couldn't feel you cock at all," the same voice carried on.

"Probably because she was messed up down there after giving birth to you and your fat head."

"Stow it, Marines," Green snapped. Marines found themselves in life-threatening situations nearly every day in their life, and their cocksure attitudes and almost inappropriate attempts at humour was how they dealt with it, in their own way: that didn't mean they were allowed to run their mouths all the time. "Anyone else got anything?"

As if on queue, the motion sensors that the soldiers carried emitted another shrill alarm: and then another. Snapping the devices up, the armed men and women focused their trackers on the corridor in front of them, then the chamber and tunnel they'd come from.

"We've got movement," hissed Stevens, unnecessarily: the panic in his voice mimicked the expressions on the other Marines as they checked their equipment and weapons. He and Dawes slinked closer to JT and Evelyn, a bond seeming to form between the four.

"Another malfunction?" JT asked nervously, hefting his pulse rifle and looking nervously over his shoulder, then back the way he was facing. "Equipment playing up?"

"Real deal, Johnny," Stevens shook his head. Whether he's knowingly called him by the nickname Evelyn gave him or not, JT couldn't say. The pulsating thrum of the trackers continued, and the soldiers became alive with activity as they each prepared their weapons and split off into two teams, each facing one way in the cramped corridor while Green slowly pulled them back towards the opened chamber: while in no way safe, it would be easier to fend off an attack there, where the creatures would be in a bottleneck on their approach. The soldiers understood the tactics, and quickly formed two defensive lines, those at the front of the line hunkering down onto their knees and those behind them standing upright.

"Thirty meters," called one of the front-most men, their eyes flickering from the corridor, to their trackers and back. "Twenty. Ten."

"Why can't we see them?" Evelyn muttered, linking her arms with JT's as he swung his head from side to side. Although it was dark, the lights from the Marines' equipment would be powerful enough to pick out the slightest movement in the dark, but nothing could be seen.

"Oh, fuck," Stevens muttered, snapping his light and weapon up towards to roof. "Check the ceiling," he called, expecting to see a swarm of the creatures hauling their weight over the grates above him. Instead, there was nothing: just metal plates and a lattice of pipes and wires that couldn't possibly hide any of the creatures.

"Holding at five," the Marine announced, checking his weapon. "They've stopped moving."

"Stealthy fuckers," Green whispered, his voice barely a whisper after the screeching of the trackers had ceased. "In the walls?" he wondered.

"Moving again," someone shouted as the trackers blipped to life again. "Here they come…"


	14. Chapter 13

XIII

Her children knew what she knew, and she could see what they saw.

Curled up in the sanctity of her womb-like nest, her senses extended as far as he brood did, a network of security sensors that ran through the ship like the nervous system of an enormous creature. The ship was hers, almost an extension of her as she took in the environments around her children in their various stages: stem to stern, port to starboard, she knew the ship as if it were her own body, despite the fact she had barely moved from the welcoming embrace of her intimate nest.

From egg to larvae, infant to adult, they were all part of _her_, the brood that ran amok the ship as an overwhelming force that brought the inhabitants of the craft to their knees. They heard her voice as one, an ethereal force that guided their actions and kept them under control, and they in turn shared their findings with her.

One group of the nightmare creatures had scouted the far side of the craft and found transparent bubbles affixed to the side of the craft, domes filled with a plethora of different creatures that would be more than adequate for expanding her hive: those that weren't suitable would be simply meat for the young, or materials for the nest itself: maybe both. Hundreds of creatures spread throughout the network of hydroponics domes that littered the hull of the craft, the buzz of bioluminescence only her and her kind could see offering a gentle warmth that beckoned to her natural urge to procreate…

Another group, the smallest of the scouting parties, were in a small room with a flat screen protecting her children from the vast and cold reaches of the void outside the craft. A room filled with glowing lights and beeping machines, a vacant chamber ideal for a reserve nursery to store her most treasured of offspring in their larval form. Should anything happen to her, there most be a successor, and keeping them far away from her and any danger to herself was a survival instinct that thrived inside her just as the urge to spread her malevolent seed…

From the lofty heights of a cavernous room filled with men and machines, a secluded and solitary spy clung to the grilled ceiling, its bulk hidden amongst pipes and outlets as it remained stoically in place, watching men encased in yellow shells tending to weapons and spacecraft alike. She knew what these were, had encountered most of them herself close up, and urged her lone soldier to remain deathly still, to avoid any contact with the infernal contraptions knowing all too well what any of them could do to the child of the hive…

A wave of multi-limbed larvae crawled through the various tunnels and ducts that spread through the ship, spreading the seeds of the creatures like a malignant tumour as they latched to the faces of unsuspecting hosts…

As she hung suspended from her resinous harness, her swollen abdomen pulsating as more and more eggs were released into the waiting arms of the smaller drones who tended her, a piercing scream lanced through the calm of the ether that knitted her to her children, and she froze as each muscle tensed and flexed: just as any other creature of nature, she knew the sound of her children and their calls of distress; she felt their agony as the bodies of her young were torn apart by lethal gunfire. She raised her immense head, the ebony comb slick with condensation and her jaw dripping mucus as she unleashed her own call, a piercing call that reached out to the ears of the unfortunates still strapped to the wall around her, beyond the confines of the engineering section she had dominated, and into the tunnels surrounding her. The adult aliens could take care of themselves, but her younger children were defenceless, they were the future of the hive, and the current generation would have to protect the next.

The sleeping creatures around her roused from their slumber: extricating themselves from their hiding places in the ridged walls that their malleable forms blended in to so well, a swell of creatures surged away from the central nesting area and towards the site of their kindred's death. Slinking into the artificial tunnels of their hive structure, they stealthily merged into the darkness as the command from their matriarch rang in their minds.

_Protect and proliferate. _


	15. Chapter 14

XIV

"Five meters," called Green, gripping the motion tracker he'd commandeered, spinning around as he tried to lock a target to open fire. So far, he had drawn a blank, and with the tracker reading the multiple advancing targets as being that close, he should have been able to pull up his weapon and fire a round off at point-blank range. As it was, the chamber was eerily vacant other than the squad of Marines and their ringing trackers. The advance of the creatures had slowed down once they hit ten meters, but they were still approaching and somehow were invisible. Was that possible? How?

"Two meters," he croaked, his throat parched as he managed to croak the update. As he did so, a wave of a nauseating odour washed over his, a pungent reek that reminded him slick oil and rusted iron. He'd not served any time in a war zone, but he had assisted in some cleanup details following raider hits, and the sights and smells of those details had stayed in his mind. The cloying scent that enveloped him now reminded him those missions, the stench of dead flesh, spilled blood and cooked meat that clung to your clothing and lingered on your tongue for days after, no matter how many times you brushed your teeth. Whatever the smell was, it was all around him… it was as it was coming from…

Beneath him?

Too late, the truth was revealed. The decking plate he stood on bulged, twisted, tore open as a thick, powerful and ridged tail ripped through the ground and coiled itself around his arms, pinning them to his side and restricting his movements as the creature in the crawlspace beneath him rose to its full seven foot stature. Green felt like he was going to topple over as the floor beneath him shifted and gave way to the creature, but the loops of muscle around him tightened and kept him upright with ease as the tail took his full weight. The world around him seemed to fade out as the tail curled around, brought him face to face with the grinning, salivating maw of the creature: he watched as the thin lips of the creature curled back; paralysed in fear as the razor sharp teeth parted, a curtain of mucus slipping from the glistening, cavernous mouth as it opened, and the faintest glimmer of a second set of teeth nestling deep within the darkness appeared. The sounds of screaming men and animals and the cacophony of gunshots as they erupted around him were lost as he stared at the impossible creature that held him up, like a rabbit trapped in the headlamps of an oncoming truck.

The last thing to enter the mind of Gunnery Sergeant Green was the toothed inner jaw of the alien creature as it lunged forwards and smashed through the front of his skull.

"Sarge is down!"

Stevens cast a wary glance over his shoulder, away from the wall of dark-skinned aliens that had simultaneously ripped their way through the floor all around the squad, and saw that Green had indeed fallen foul to the attacking creatures. Wrapped in the powerful coils of its tail, the creature's jaws dripped crimson gore as it stared eyelessly at the visage of the slaughtered Marine and the fist-sized ragged hole that had been punched through the front of his skull. sensing the life-force had left the body, the creature unravelled its tail and let the corpse fall to the floor before turning on the next Marine, flexing talons and snaking out its deadly tail.

Stevens was quick to react, squeezing off a salvo of shots that smashed into the glistening carapace of the creature and spraying putrid blood across the decking. Far more powerful than the soft-slugs his men had been issued with, the high explosive rounds punched holes in the torso of the animal as it fell, but Stevens didn't have enough time to gloat over his superior weapons, nor did her have time to mourn the downed Marine.

"Man down," he called out, knowing that there was no point in calling out for a medic, or setting Evelyn to go and check on him. "Close up."

The Marines tried to form up closer, keeping their ranks tightly knit while overlapping fields of fire as the marauding creatures advanced on them, hauling their bulk from the crawlspace beneath the flooring and screaming their daunting, high-pitched wails. Bullets ripped through their carapace, their chitinous armour no match for the explosive piercing rounds from the pulse rifles: nor were their toughened bodies any match for the high-powered ammunition that the smartgun was spewing.

Mallard moved his weapon gracefully from side to side, the eyes of an experienced weapons operator pressing the firing stud as perfect targets presented themselves: limbs snapping as they were surgically removed with a ten millimetre round, heads erupting as they were peppered with rounds, ribcages shattering with acidic gouts of juice. His movements were as graceful as a ballet, his macabre dance of death mesmerising as each of his dancing partners fell at his feet, but even though he looked like he was out of control, Stevens knew that he wasn't. He'd seen smartgun operators in combat before, knew that the symbiosis formed between man and machine was deadly, and that Mallard was more in control than any other Marine there. But with Green down, the only Marine that needed to be completely in control was Stevens himself.

"We're fucking losing it here," Stevens shook his head, and both Dawes and JT nodded their agreement. Evelyn stayed close to JT, feverishly looking around at the demonic creatures that danced in the flickering flashes of gunfire. He raised his voice so it could be heard on the com-channel and over the sounds of combat, of men and creatures dying.

"Pull back to the hangar: we can't hold them here: we need to flush the lower decks."

Stevens planned on using a scheme similar to the plan Green had worked out, only instead of waiting until the creatures flooded the hanger before sucking them into vacuum, he was going to bring the vacuum to them and flush the lower decks from the hangar. If he could get the Marines secured in the dropship and open the hangar doors, they would be safe while the animals were flushed out into space. Sucking the atmosphere out the lower decks wouldn't do any good to any of the people strapped to the walls; but at the same time, if anyone was fixed into the hive structure they would either be dead already… or worse.

"Fall back," Stevens repeated himself, pausing by an unsightly mound of organic residue as he dropped an empty magazine from his weapon and slammed home a fresh one. Despite the fact the ammo had more of a kick than the soft slugs and far more effective at taking down the creatures, they were quick and, despite the fact they were packed in tight, managed to evade most of the controlled salvos: only the self-targeting smartgun was raking up the casualties.

His eyes darting feverishly from side to side, he cycled a round from the magazine into the chamber and snarled in anger as the weapon jammed. He dropped to the floor, cursing under his breath as he tried to work free the caseless round, and felt the air above him be sliced in two as a lengthy, muscular tail lashed out from the shapeless mound of hive structure he knelt beside. A creature pulled itself from the resinous node it had coiled itself around, its seamless camouflage breaking up as its movements betrayed its hiding place and raised itself to its full height. It suddenly dawned on Stevens why the creatures went to the trouble of covering the walls with the organic growth: not just as a method of incapacitating their hosts, but also to blend in with the environment. He lifted his rifle up to aim at the looming creature, pumped the underslung grenade launcher and fired at point blank range, the canister round crashing into the distended ribcage of the creature and knocking it backwards, sending it skittering backwards across the ground and crashing into the form of a nearby Marine lying injured on the decking. Both human and alien soldier curled into a ball as limbs became entwined with one another, fingers raked armour and talons shredded flesh, while acidic juices mixed with crimson blood and formed a lethal cocktail of bubbling pink sludge. The Marine's death was by no means quick, but at least he was dead: Stevens had noticed that the aliens were still managing to take living prey in the fray of a firefight that had casualties on both sides, unlike the one sided slaughter that had happened in the barracks.

Finally clearing the round from his rifle and with his three close companions surrounding him as he worked, he pulled himself back to his feet and panned his weapon around, seeing that more than half of the squad had been killed or taken, but the flow of alien creatures was certainly starting to ebb. Other than the four survivors of the massacre in the barracks, only Mallard and a second Marine remained standing, the six quickly bunching up and the soldiers instinctively forming a protective circle around the civilians, despite the fact JT had his own weapon. For a moment, there were no signs of the aliens other than the shattered corpses lying prone on the ground amongst twisted human forms, and a heady acrid odour that came in thick putrid clouds rising from the corpses and lingering in the air as a muddy, tawny mist. The acid mixed with the stench of spent propellant was choking, forcing JT and Evelyn to pull the collar of their clothing up over their mouth to filter some of the detritus from the air. The Marines were unable to adjust any of their clothing to do that, but Mallard had a black rag of material tied around his belt that he unfastened and wrapped around his mouth: it wasn't perfect, but it would help filter some of the air.

"They've pulled back," murmured Dawes, taking the opportunity to reload her weapon in the lull in the fighting. "What's happening?"

"Either we've done enough to scare them off, or they need to regroup just like we do."

"The end to the assault, or the eye of the storm," JT nodded in agreement.

"Fuckers," grumbled Mallard, motioning to JT to cover him while he stripped his weapon and replaced the ammo drum. He hadn't spent the full five hundred rounds, but he knew it was better to have a full load ready instead of a half load. He moved quickly, threading in ammunition and pulling back on the cocking mechanism before raising back into position. He glanced over his shoulder, caught Stevens eye and nodded grimly. "What's the plan?"

"How far to the control panel?"

"Couple of hundred meters," JT shrugged his shoulders, "give or take."

"And what about the hanger?"

"About the same."

"Retreat," Stevens nodded, "We know what lies back there, there could be _anything _waiting for us in there. That's their hive, their home, and you seen that bastard that nearly got me: when they're clinging to those walls they're practically invisible."

"Come back with more men?" suggested Dawes, nodding in agreement.

"Fuck that, I ain't comin' back in here," hissed the young private, the words 'Deviant Heart' etched into his shoulder plate. "Count me out."

"Pull back to the hanger," Stevens nodded, his decision made. "Better the devil you know than the devil you don't. Slow retreat, Dawes and me lead the way, Mallard, you cover our back: now we know roughly where they're coming from, it makes more sense to have the main firepower at the back. Let's hustle."

The six began to slowly move back the way they came, returning into the confines of the corridor littered with pipes and conduits, thick with moisture and steam. The corridor seemed alive now, pipes rattling and airshafts creaking, as if something were moving through them unseen, ghosting the retreating soldiers and tracking their movements. They moved quick, quicker than they had on their tentative journey into the lower decks, and quickly found themselves at the sealed hatch. Stevens hammered on the door, his back pressed against it while he scanned the dark corridor he'd just travelled back through: had something moved there, glistening wetly in the dim light of the ill-lit tunnel. He looked at the tracker he held, seeing the blank screen, and looked towards the barrel of the smartgun: it didn't twitch, didn't jerk towards any potential target. A trick of the light, or just an overactive imagination?

"C'mon, open up," he shouted, his voice cracking slightly as panic crept into his voice. Panic turned to fear as the slithering movement in the darkness was accompanied by a soft, rasping hiss. It could simply be one of the myriad of pipes venting steam, but it could just as easily be one of the creatures stalking them in the background.

"We're working on it," a muffled voice from the other side of the door spoke up, then became clearer as they adjusted the headset they wore. "We need to cut the locks."

"Any time soon would be good," Stevens growled, leaning against the door with his back and bracing his weapon against his hip. This close to home, he would be more than willing to throw all his training to the winds and let rip on full-auto, knowing fine well that there were more magazines filled with rounds just waiting for him on the other side of the door.

"We're through two locks now," the soldier on the other side of the door updated him. "Two more to go."

"Fuck," spat Mallard, glancing over his shoulder at the door. "It's a good job we ain't in a rush or nothin'. C'mon, man, get that piece of shit open."

"Thought you were a badass ground pounder, 'Roid Rage," the Marine working the cutting torch laughed, a harsh and barking sound that crackled on the radio link. "What's the matter? Need another hit of drugs?"

"I'll hit you soon as we get through if you don't hurry up," grumbled Mallard. "Pound _your_ _face _into the damn ground, asshole."

Stevens felt a grin spread across his face as he heard the third lock of the hatch give way, and knew they were almost safe: almost, but not quite.

That hissing rasp sounded again, longer and closer this time, and it certainly wasn't a pipe venting steam or alleviating pressure. Stevens held his breath, survival instincts kicking in, and he watched as the darkness erupted into a blur of movement as one of the creatures erupted into the dull light of the corridor and rushed the group of six armed people.

In the sudden flash of movement, Stevens managed to make out some details of the creature: he knew that even after what he'd seen in the corridors leading into the bowels of the engineering deck, he still had to check his targets to make sure there wasn't any survivors in the firing line.

Its sleek head was encased in an opaque membrane that ran the length of its extended cranium, different to the exposed and ridged heads of the other creatures Stevens had already encountered. With saliva dripping from its maw, and scrambled along the ground on all fours, possessing powerful hind legs jointed like that of a racehorse or dog that pushed it forwards on a collision course with the six. Its back long and smooth, missing the ridges and pipes that the other creatures had, and a tail that whipped along behind it longer than those of the other creatures. It was still one of the alien creatures, but looked different: a subspecies? An evolved form? Unless it had evolved an immunity to armour piercing rounds, it was still going to go the same way that its brethren had. Before Stevens could further assess the target or fire a round off, the young private brought his own weapon into play, unleashing a salvo of bullets that ripped through the creature's lower abdomen. Its legs smashed into a useless, acid-riddled pulp and it collapsed onto the floor, but momentum and its immense powerful claws kept it hurtling onwards, ploughing into the young soldier and pulling him down to the ground just as the door behind Stevens slowly cycled open.

"Get in," Stevens commanded, ushering JT and Evelyn into the hanger, beyond the surprised and confused faces of the Marines guarding the entrance, and rushed to Mallard's side as he tried to fish the screaming private from the swirling, bubbling remains of the thrashing alien.

"Leave him, it's too late for him," Dawes shouted, watching as Mallard managed to grab the outstretched arm of the flailing Marine and pull hard, the limb coming away from the seething mess with a ragged lump of smoking flesh where the Marine's shoulder should have been. Disgusted, Mallard threw the limb back into the frothing mass of bodies and brought his weapon about to bear on the darkened end of the corridor, and the cacophony of rattling hisses and mewling screams that echoed down the cramped hallway. He gripped the handles of the weapon tightly, motioning for Stevens and Dawes to head through the hatchway and followed closely behind him.

"Here they come," he grunted before squeezing the firing stud, hosing the corridor with ten millimetre rounds and grinning sadistically, his face and the demonic apparitions that dominated the far end of the corridor illuminated by the stuttering muzzle flash. The advance of the creatures were like movements in a flickering strobe, each burst of light bringing the wall or chitinous armour ever-closer, jaws dripping with fresh saliva and talons outstretched. They fell beneath the onslaught of Mallard's machinegun as he backed up and nudged Stevens and Dawes through the hatch.

"Seal it up," he shouted, remaining on the other side of the doorway. "Get this hatch sealed up."

"Get in here first," Stevens yelled above the staccato of gunfire. "We can't seal it with you out there."

"If I come in, you won't be able to seal it up before they come in. Close it! Seal it! Now!"

"Damnit," Stevens hissed, knowing he was right. If Mallard broke away from the oncoming aliens, there'd be a lull in the firing as the hatchway was sealed that could be enough for them to squeeze through and cause havoc in the landing bay. He knew that Mallard knew there'd be no surviving the onslaught, and was more than willing to let himself fall so his friends may survive. Cursing, Stevens nodded to one of the Marines huddled around the hatch.

"Seal it."

"What? You can't be…"

"Don't have time for this," Mallard hollered, "Shut the fucking door and lock it down tight!"

Stevens hammered the controls for the hatch himself, snapping off a short salute to Mallard as he vanished from view. Even with the reinforced hatchway sealed tight, and the number of welding torched that were already going to work to weld the door to its frame, the repeating drone of the gunfire almost muting the screams of the advancing creatures.

"Come get it," the voice of Mallard sounded as the constant drone of gunfire ceased. It changed pitch as the sounds of his handgun being discharged, the trumpeting wails of the animals came closer and closer, and the dull 'whoomph' of a grenade going off temporarily drowned out the sounds of the aliens. There were screams, both human and inhuman, then the first of a series of thumps against the door, the animals on the other side of the barricade throwing their weight and oversized craniums against it. The Marines welding the door shut flinched involuntary as the door bounced, then worked twice as fast to secure the door, securing it as best they could before piling up packing crates and welding those to the walls and floor around the door.

As the Marines finished of the last of the welding, and the creatures continued their relentless assault against the door, Stevens paced back and forth, throwing his rifle on the ground and scowling at the obscured door. For a moment he was silent, and all eyes were on him as he stalked back and forth. His anger finally erupted as he lost his temper.

"Fuck!"

He pulled his helmet off and hurled it across the hanger as he screamed at the top of his voice, looking around the faces of the Marines that were left in the hanger. Of the squad that had went into the depths of Engineering, only the four crew of _The Eden _were lucky enough – or prepared enough – to survive the encounter. None of the other soldiers seemed to be able to comprehend the loss of highly trained soldiers. With a snarl, Stevens headed towards the open ramp of the dropship, his three friends trailing him as he bounded up the open ramp, into the vehicle itself and pulled up a seat in front of the operations console. It was no where near as large as the one that had been stationed in _The Eden's _barracks, but it would serve its purpose.

"We need to get in touch with Thorn, let him know we're fucked, and see if we can arrange an evac."

"Do you think that'll happen?" JT asked, sounding hopeful. Stevens simply shrugged his shoulders: he wasn't hopeful.


	16. Chapter 15

XV

"Let me go through this one more time," Thorn scowled at the screen displaying a somewhat haggard and tired-looking Stevens. His face was streaked with grime and sweat, his eyes glazed and distant as he glared into the video pickup. "You can't get any of the pilots to the bridge. You tried to disable the engines, but lost half of the men I sent you to these things in the process. And you didn't even get to the controls to disable the engines."

"Christ, Thorn, there's nothing we can do from here. Pull us out of here…"

Thorn cut him off with a dismissive wave of the hand, shaking his head.

"_The Eden_ already has a quarantine enforced on it, nothing gets off. We've hacked in to some of the systems we can, jettisoned all the escape pods: we can't chance any spread of this infection to other ships in the fleet, which means we can't allow you or anyone else to cross over."

"Fuck that," a voice from off screen spat, and the face of another man bobbed into view: Thorn had read through enough dossiers in the past couple of hours to be able to identify the man as John Tomly, one of the pilots aboard _The Eden_. "I'm a pilot, I'll just fire this thing up, drop out the hanger and come on over."

"If anything leaves the ship without my say so, our weapons will automatically target, track and destroy them. Think your fly-boy piloting skills can evade a class seven military targeting computer?"

JT muttered something under his breath, then retreated out of view, leaving Stevens to be the sole occupant of view screen. He ran a shaking hand through his close-cropped hair, then cradled his head in his hands.

"You're saying we're fucked, then," he finally said, exhaling through pursed lips. "No back up coming, no way off this crate. What're you saying we should do, break out the cards and play poker? Sit on our ass while we wait for the engines to burn out? And how long's that going to take?"

"I understand that you've been through a lot…"

"You don't understand fuck-all," Stevens spat, glaring menacingly at the screen before he caught himself and slowly, deliberately, raised his hand and touched the tip of his finger to his furrowed brow. He spoke again in a low voice. "You don't understand fuck-all, _sir_."

"I know you've been through Hell, soldier, I know that. Listen, I need a level-headed man over there to keep everything in line, the last thing I want is for anarchy to break out amongst the troops, and at the moment that level-headed man is _you_. Don't fuck up on me here, Stevens. While you're over there, you need to make yourself useful. You can't get to the bridge, and you can't get to engineering. In the meantime, see if you can get hacked into the security network; find any pockets of survivors there may be. If you can't get to them, at least instruct them on what to do until someone can get to them."

"What about the lifeboats?" an unseen voice from off-screen asked. "Can't we grab one of them? Get a message out to any other survivors…"

"The lifeboats have gone," Thorn waved his hand dismissively. "The quarantine on the ship can't be broken, we can't afford to let any of those creatures spread. The lifeboats were jettisoned not long after we last spoke."

"Left us to hang out and dry," Stevens shook his head, looking glumly at the keyboard resting beneath his fingers. He nodded towards one of the people beside him. "See what you can get from the network, hack in to whatever you can."

"I've got some limited access codes," the ship's pilot crossed across the background behind Stevens, offering his assistance to the Comtech. "I can get you through some system securities."

"I'm going to send over a small shuttle," Thorn announced, tapping a series of commands into the keypad fixed to the arm of his chair. "Just a one-man shuttle, loaded with enough supplies to keep you going while we assess the situation and put some plans into action."

"We could do with more men," Stevens pressed the urgency of their situation. Thorn shook his head.

"We've got a plan to get _The Eden _turned around, but I need as many of the men onboard as we can spare. You're holed up in the hanger, you only need to hold your position. The creatures haven't made any attempt to break in yet."

"They're hammering at the hatch now. The only thing that's keeping us away from them is a pressure hatch and a pile of slag that used to be crates."

"They've stopped," a woman's voice. Steven's Comtech, or maybe his doctor friend? It was hard for Thorn to say. Stevens scowled at her, clearly trying to bluff a little extra resource for his men. Despite himself, Thorn found himself grinning at Stevens, who clearly had some balls in trying to pull the wool over his eyes.

"But they could just be waiting for us," Stevens tried to reason his argument, but the slump in his shoulders indicated he knew he was beat.

"A compromise," Thorn offered. "The man I'm sending over in the shuttle with the supplies, he'll be a formidable addition to your forces. Along with food, he'll bring a few more crates of ammo. Keep me updated with what happens, let me know if you find any survivors."

Thorn thumbed the screen off, turned to address the rest of the bridge.

"Have we matched velocities and course with _The Eden_?"

The pilots operating the helms nodded solemnly, their eyes fixed on their instruments. Though he hadn't been summoned to the bridge of _The Vengeance_, Cray had managed to weasel his way back onto the control deck and was close to hand, eager to know what was going on aboard his ship, and how much of a close call he'd had after leaving. Thorn noted the smirk on his face, felt his gall rise.

"I don't recall asking you to be here," Thorn murmured, barely sparing him a passing glance.

"Thought I'd see how my boy was doing," he nodded towards the view screen that had previously held Steven's image. He slowly shook his head. "Losing half the team's not too good."

"Before you get too smug and gloat about how 'your boy' is handling this, keep in mind that those men lost were from _this _craft. I knew some of them, played cards with some of them. Though they were my subordinates, they were still my friends, and in all honesty, I think that if _you_ were in charge there would have been a lot more casualties, and not just military."

"My men have been wiped, too," Cray argued the point, though he didn't sound as if he was too cut up about it. "I'm not too happy about that."

Thorn snorted in derision, shaking his head at the barefaced lie Cray thought he would be able to pull off. His face was completely devoid of any loss or emotion other than glee that his nemesis seemed to be losing men.

"Docking procedure commencing," announced one of the ensigns from his station, looking up momentarily and catching the eyes of Thorn. He nodded in approval, pushed himself up from the seat, and strolled across the room to the console. Cray looked to be in two minds over whether he should follow, then reluctantly decided to stay close to Thorn, falling in line a couple of feet behind him.

"Bring us in closer," Thorn nodded again, watching as one of the holographic displays flickered to life, a crude depiction of _The Vengeance _as it approached the flank of _The Eden_, slowly but surely falling in to position beside it. Docking ships in space was a regular occurrence, and something that Thorn had done and witnessed a hundred times before, but each time he still found himself holding his breath as one vehicle encroached on another.

The proximity of _The Eden _set alarms blazing, the bridge of the military cruiser awash with red light as the sensors around the craft detected the encroachment of the hydroponics ship within what the ships artificial intelligence considered its personal space. The ensigns all around the bridge worked in unison, ferrying message back and forth as their hands danced over the controls and silenced the alarms, overwrote safety procedures, and brought the two craft closer together. It was slower than normal, the process taking far longer because the bridge of _The Eden _was vacant, effectively a ghost ship left adrift in the star field.

"Easy," Thorn muttered, exhaling through clenched teeth, his eyes fixed on the holographic representation of the two ships slowly merging in to one. Each flashed from red to green, a silent alarm that required the utmost attention of all skilled pilots on the bridge as they slowly guided the crafts together.

"We're within range now," announced the ensign closest to him, his voice wavering slightly as he concentrated on the readouts on his panel.

"Deploy the clamps, put it all on screen."

The holographic image of the two ships blinked off, was replaced by a series of views pulled from sensors fitted around the hull of the military craft. The views were confusing and distorted at first as the lenses within the cameras tried to focus on the gunmetal-grey hull of _The Eden _as it nestled alongside _The Vengeance_, its uneven hull spattered with bulging growths filled with all manner of vegetation and animal life. The hydroponics domes were opaque, the briefest of life within them flickering beneath the polarised surface as they gazed blankly on the Behemoth cruiser nestled snugly beside it. The skin of the military craft shuddered and became active as thick docking clamps extruded themselves from their housing, the break in the airtight pockets they'd previously resided in releasing jets of air that froze into crystalline structures and drifted away from the craft like giant snowflakes. The clamps, seventeen in total along the side of _The Vengeance_, slowly reached out towards the hydroponics ship, their immense electro-magnetic pads touching the sides of the craft just as they became active, bonding the two craft together. With the coupling complete, the clamps started a slow, gradual retraction, drawing the two craft together and merging them into one unsightly craft, like Siamese twins joined along the side, though these twin sisters were by no means identical.

"Coupling complete," reported the ensign beside Thorn as the ship shuddered briefly once the docking clamps had stopped drawing them together. He sighed in relief, then looked to Thorn with a grin, nodding his head. "Airlocks extended to the starboard and doors remaining sealed as commanded."

"Excellent work," Thorn slapped the young ensign on the back of his shoulder. "Keep synced up with the computer aboard _The Eden_, make sure we mimic their every movement, I don't want us to get ripped apart mid-transit. Make sure we're locked on to the same course until we can slave their systems to ours. Security."

Thorn turned away from the men and women still working over their consoles and speaking into a headset nestling over his ear.

"Sir," the response was swift, as if the security section had been waiting in anticipation, ready for his commands. They'd been briefed about the situation, and knew what they had to do. Still, it would do no harm for Thorn to remind them once more.

"Remain stationed by your assigned airlocks. Remember, no one is allowed on or off the craft, no exceptions. Keep those seals tight, and your weapons ready. Are the oh-gee team ready?"

"Ready, sir," a new voice sounded over the communications relay. "Team prepped, and I've got the shackle ready. We're already on our way."

"Excellent," Thorn smiled, returning to his chair and lowering his bulk back down into the frame. He looked over at Cray, finally offered him a seat beside him. He reluctantly accepted, his face a mask of intrigue and confusion.

"What's going on?" he finally asked.

"We're going to use a shackle, hook us up to _The Eden_, and get the craft under control from here. If we can't get the pilots to the bridge, we'll bring the bridge to the craft." The shackle wasn't the correct name for the device, but that was the name it was universally known by, as once it was fitted to a craft, it slaved the systems of that craft to the parent, shackling the two together and making them move as one. Though the computer of _The Eden _could be read from the outside, it couldn't be tampered with. Cray nodded, understanding the procedure and silently impressed with it. He wouldn't have thought about it, he would have had his men press on up the ship as best as they could. As if Thorn could read his mind, he nodded softly.

"Yes, if you sit here a little while, you might pick up a few pointers on leadership," his comment was nothing short of a slap in the face, but Cray kept his cool as best as he could. He was sure that if he hung around long enough, Thorn would screw up, and he'd love to be there when he did.

0

Cole Harper was a member of the specialised zero-gravity strike force stationed aboard _The Vengeance_, one of the few Marines in the fleet who had been trained for special operations in the airless vacuum of space. He embraced the feeling that came with stepping out into a weightless void, that peculiar sensation that fluttered in his stomach and made him feel that he was alive. Every time he stepped out into the void, he remembered how small and insignificant he actually was when compared to the "big picture" around him.

This time, though, it felt different.

He stood on the lowered cargo ramp of a dropship that had nestled on the hull of _The Eden_, towards the front of the vehicle, and looked out across the fifty meters gap between the parked craft his target, the front viewscreen of the bridge. Nervously adjusting his grip on the equipment he held – a pulse rifle and the shackle he needed to install in the bridge itself – he peeled one foot up from the ramp and slammed it down against the hull, gingerly stepping out onto the hull and walking slowly, just like he'd been trained. All around him, he was surrounded by either the steel of machine or the airless void of space, and his breath echoed in the confines of the armoured helmet he wore, the face plate heated to create minimal condensation as he breathed.

"Take you time, Harper," the voice of the dropship pilot crackled over his intercom as he left the shadow of the smaller shuttlecraft, pausing slightly to look over his shoulder at the grinning man sitting in the cockpit. He waved casually, rapping the window of the cabin. Although the sound couldn't travel in space, it could be heard over the radio. "Ain't like I got anything better to do. Just don't fly off on your own, you hear? I ain't gonna chase your fool corpse across the cosmos just 'cause you sneeze and loose your footing."

"I'm always careful," Harper motioned towards his magnetic boots, then tugged the umbilical cord attached to the harness of his pressure suit. "But I'm linked up to you, too, so I won't go far."

"Maybe you do this quick enough, we take you on a little ride, huh? A little astro-skiing?"

"We'll see how I make time," Harper laughed, shaking his head, the motion of which was lost in the toughened casing that surrounded him. "Keep the channel open, I'll let you know when we're coming back."

Behind Harper, a pair of soldiers followed him closely, one nursing a pulse rifle as he would a child, the other pulling a small explosive charge that trailed behind him in the zero gravity. His rifle was slung over his shoulder and trailed behind him just like the charge.

"How come we get this duty? I hear the ship's got the plague… why're we breaking quarantine? Why not just abandon it and nuke the fucker?"

"Collateral damage? All the civs, all the livestock, pretty much everything aboard the craft that's worth a dime… you want to explain to some board of execs why you blew up a ship instead of just popping a window? See, Chuck, this is why you're never allowed to carry the charge. You stick to covering our ass, I'll keep an eye on the charge."

"Knock it out you two," Harper shook his head. Of all the Marines he could get teamed up with, why did he have wind up with Chuck and Marcus? Marcus wasn't too bad, but Chuck was more of an annoyance than a hindrance to the mission. "Just make sure you keep us shielded with that dropship, the last thing I want is for one of our suits to get punctured by a piece of debris."

Harper couldn't help fight the smile that spread across his face.

"Well, at least keep me and Marcus shielded, anyway."

"Fucking comedian," Chuck grumbled to himself, adjusting his grip on the rifle. "The fuck'm I doing out here, babysitting a fucking bomb from what? Ain't another fuckin' spacewalker for another million fuckin' light years."

"Protocol," Harper said, rolling his eyes, "You want to tell Thorn you think you doing your job's a waste of time? Cause I can patch you through to him direct…"

Chuck waved his hand dismissively as the trio approached the thick, reinforced window that led into the bridge, placing his gauntlet against the surface and rapping it gently, cooing in a soft voice: "Anyone home?" The windows were polarised, so nothing could be seen of the interior from the outside.

"Sensors've got nothing in there," the crackle of the pilot from the comfort of the dropship relayed the information his instruments gave him. "No life signs, no heat sources, nothing. It's open season for you guys."

"Oo-rah," Marcus stepped forwards and swung around the charge, pressing it against the reinforced glass and pushing the primer button, watching as the corners of the device gave off a soft red glow as they heated up, fusing itself to the glass. The trio stepped back from the panel, weapons raised and ready, then Harper gave the nod.

Marcus thumbed the triggering device he held.

The charge erupted silently, a sudden flash of magnesium sparks flaring to life, only to extinguish just as quickly in the oxygen-free environment. As brief as the low-yield explosion was, it did its job, shattering the window into a thousand fragments and exposing the interior to the harsh vacuum of space. The glass fragments hung suspended in place, twinkling like a curtain of stars, while the escaping atmosphere from the from the interior of the ship cut off as bulkheads were automatically sealed in place to prevent any further seepage. Harper stepped forwards, lifting his weapon and nudging aside the fragments of glass dangling before him while nudging a switch in his helmet with his chin, activating the halogen spot lamps attached to the side of his helmet. The bridge within was dark, a thick and choking blackness that pulsed with flickering control panels and flashing readouts. Several screens flashed warnings about the hull breach in the bridge, and that the automatic shutters had been disabled, as had several other systems in the bridge: the result of the breaching charge that not only destroyed the glass, but also emitted a weak electromagnetic pulse that knocked out most of the systems in the bridge, including the gravity plates in the room. Not that that mattered for Harper and his men, as their boots kept them in place as they pulled themselves in through the veil of thick, shattered glass and into the bridge itself.

Papers and pens hung suspended in the air above several of the desks, frozen in a moment of time, while a thick, tar-coloured liquid floated above an overturned coffee mug, and random items of clothing seemed to hover above the deck. Harper swept his spotlights from one side of the room to another, stopping dead in his tracks as his beams of light played across a glistening, tumour-like growth that seemed to dominate one third of the room: a shimmering, organic structure that was grey-black in colour and comprised of pipes, ridged sections and grotesque shapes akin to enlarged and exposed ribcages and melted loops of distended intestines. The structure covered the wall and part of the floor, merging with a complex network of slime-covered roots that joined a collection of translucent grey oval pods together.

"The fuck is that?" Chuck motioned with the muzzle of his rifle, pointing to the obscure creation.

"Don't know," Harper shook his head. "Stay away, it could be anything. A meltdown in the power grid, damage from the charge: it might even have something to do with the quarantine, so don't touch shit, you hear me?"

Chuck muttered wordlessly to himself, standing beside Harper as he located the main navigation console and tore the front panel off, letting the plate float away as he fixed the shackle in place and keyed in the activation code. A small black screen scrolled through a series of coding before illuminating a red status light.

"Shackle in place," Harper announced, giving the pair of soldiers with him the thumbs up. "Walk in park, am I right?"

"Copy that," the dropship pilot's voice crackled over the intercom, faint and punctuated with static. "_Vengeance _confirming the link-up now. We've got it, why don't you head on back."

"They sent the three of us to do this?" Chuck complained, lowering his rifle as he started to trudge back towards the open viewport. "Talk about a waste of resources." He was so intent on leaving the bridge, he didn't pay attention to where he was walking, and lost his footing on a thick cable that snaked across the decking. With one of his magnetic boots loose, his second boot peeled away from the deck and he drifted upwards, turning slowly in an arc and feeling his back knock against the ceiling.

"Quit fuckin' around," Harper sneered, slowly making his way towards him and reaching out, trying to snag his ankle as he floated helplessly.

"I tripped on one of those cables," Chuck snapped, clearly infuriated at the fact he'd lost his footing.

"There's nothing there to trip on," Marcus went to help him, but he was distracted by a glimmer of movement in his periphery vision. He turned, moving slowly to make sure he didn't find himself floating free like his comrade, and watched in disbelief as a figure peeled itself away from the twisted plastic-like construction, like a sniper wearing a Ghillie suit rising from the scrub: invisible one moment, then there the next. Only the suit this person wore wasn't like any suit Marcus had seen before. Sleek armour, jet black and toughened, with an enlarged helmet casing that seemed aesthetically and functionally out of place, as if the suit designer had been on a drug-induced trip while designing it. It had to be a suit; it couldn't be anything else; nothing could survive in the vacuum of space.

The protective visor of the mysterious suit slip open, revealing the black polarised faceplate beneath: maybe it was something that had been issued to key members of the crew to keep them safe from whatever plague had infested the ship? It stalked gracefully across the bridge towards him, and Marcus watched enthralled as it moved, almost swam, through the zero-gravity bridge, trailing a lengthy umbilical cord that was surely attached to a life support system somewhere. Before Marcus could say anything, the suited figure clasped his shoulders with its decorative gauntlets, pulled him in closer towards his helmet. It was a tried and tested method of communication in space if radio silence had been called: while sound didn't pass through space, the vibrations from one faceplate to another did: could it be that this strange suit had all the money pumped into decoration and aesthetics, and nothing into systems?

As the figure pulled closer, it dawned on Marcus that there was something not right about the suit. There didn't appear to be any joints, and as the light improved in the dark and murky room, the suited figure seemed to be more and more… organic? The truth finally dawned on Marcus as the black faceplate turned out to not be a faceplate but the deep, cavernous mouth of the creature.

"Fuck me," he muttered, enthralled as his faceplate knocked against the glistening teeth of the creature. "Harper?"

The pharyngeal jaw of the creature exploded outwards, ripping through the reinforced glass and punching through Marcus' face, his gurgling scream cutting off as the air rushed from his suit and stole his breath.

Harper turned around in time to see the dark creature plow its extendable inner jaw into the helmet of Marcus, watched as blood gushed out in shapeless mounds and crystallised in the coldness of space and the final jet of air that seeped through the ragged hole in the faceplate. Marcus went limp in the creatures grip, and as the creature turned away from the corpse and released it from its grip, Marcus remained upright, his boots remaining attached to the deck and his arms slowly lifting from him as the lack of gravity meant there was nothing to pull him back to the ground. Harper didn't even think about the physics-defying creature that advanced on him, the animal that seemed to thrive in the airless environment, he simply lifted his weapon and squeezed the trigger. The rifle in his grip thundered soundlessly in his hands, the vibrations of the weapon rumbling in his arms and the brief muzzle flashes casting macabre illuminations across the baroque structure that was suddenly _alive_ as more of the creatures seemed to unfurl from previously unseen hiding places: crevices that could barely contain a man giving birth to pairs of the nightmarish abominations.

Chuck added his own weapons fire to the fray as the marauding creatures advanced on him, stabilising himself against the ceiling with one hand and firing blindly with the other, adding his own silent staccato of explosive rounds to the assault.

"The fuck are they?" he screamed, his terrified scream almost piercing Harper's ears. "What the fuck are they?"

"Fall back," Harper shouted, slowly backtracking towards the opening. "Don't let them flank us!"

It was easier said than done. Despite their hours of training in zero gravity environments and the equipment they carried, the alien creatures were far more graceful than the Marines in their movements, practically swimming through space, digging their talons and claws into consoles and walls as they propelled themselves along, tails coiling and extending like a powerful spring. The quicker of the creatures had already swept around behind them, blocking their escape and hemming them in, while another pair of the malevolent creatures swooped on the floating form of Chuck, powerful hands locking around limbs and pulling him first one way, then another, until his arm twisted and snapped free, trailing globules of glistening blood in its wake. With one limb removed, the rest were soon to follow as another pair of creatures leapt on him, like sharks in a feeding frenzy spurred on by the scent of blood.

Confused and overwhelmed by the inexplicable attack, Harper retreated from the bloody miasma emanating from the limbless torso of Chuck that hung limb and bloody in the air, away from the gruesome wraith-like figure of Marcus that still stood erect, his ruined head surrounded by a halo of blood. His escape route was cut off, and with the glistening structure dominating one of the walls, he couldn't find the door leading into the rest of the ship: even if he could, he wouldn't be able to initiate the manual override to seal off the adjoining corridor and form a makeshift airlock on his own. He stumbled onto the carpet of roots and webbing that covered the floor, his breathing shallow as he struggled to keep his wits and senses. The swarm of aliens had seemed to forget about him in the midst of the carnage and blood, and maybe he would be able to survive this ordeal if he could just hide: whatever the creatures were, he didn't think they'd be able to sniff him out, but they may be able to track him by his umbilical cord to the waiting dropship. He could try initiating an automatic recoil of the lifeline, which may pull him through the frenzied creatures, but he didn't want to underestimate the speed at which they could lash out and tear him apart as he was pulled through their midst. If push came to shove, he knew he could walk home, so he detached the cord from his belt and gave a sharp tug on it, activating the winch system in the hold of the dropship. It slowly retracted, leaving him alone and unattached, but ultimately less traceable.

He hoped.

The numerous consoles that littered the bridge were more than large enough to hide the bulk of his suit, and he crouched low, listening for any telltale signs that may indicate one of the creatures were approaching. All he could hear were the crunch of teeth against bone as his fallen team mates were chewed on by the creatures, the sound of razor sharp fangs grinding against skulls picked up by the comlinks in each helmet.

"Does anyone read me?" Harper whispered into his pickup, hoping to get through to the dropship pilot. "Jesus Christ, is anyone there?"

The only response he get was a static hiss, something clearly interfering with his communications relay. Maybe a residual effect from the EMP from the explosion?

He looked as his gauntlets as he pulled them away from the surface of the console he rested on, thin strands of the resinous material that coated the wall and floor around him. Was it possible that whatever had been sprayed on the walls and floor around him actually dampened the signal?

Harper shook his head, crouching low and checking his rifle, making sure his form was hidden by the console or the large organic-looking pod that lay beside it. He wasn't sure what it was, but it didn't look like any of those creatures, and it provided cover, which suited him fine. As he shifted his weight, his brushed his hand against the surface, feeling it give slightly before springing back to shape. Harper imagined the pod would be cold, and not just because it was in an airless environment: it seemed to glisten with a coating of gel, and Harper watched in fascination as the top of the pod seemed to quiver, then peel apart: from his low position on the floor, he couldn't see into the opening, but could see something stirring as a thin yellowy poked over the lip, then another. Harper swallowed hard and froze, holding his breath as he watched another pair of legs appear, and then part of the creature rise into view; a leathery spider with a ropey tail made of powerful muscle. It crawled over the rim of the egg, the arachnid seeming to home in on Harper, despite it having no visible senses. Harper felt cold fear in his stomach, a lifetime of arachnophobia embodied in the impossible creature that was crawling towards him. He found his body responding to him just as the creature lunged at him, but his reactions weren't quick enough for the lightning-quick spider as its finger-like appendages clattered onto his helmet and engulfed it.

Panicking, eyes darting from side to side, Harper could see the fleshy pink underside of the creature pressed against his faceplate: when he was younger, he'd hoped to impress a girl by taking her to a up-market restaurant that served real meat – none of the soy-processed garbage most places served. He'd ordered a plate of oysters, aware of their aphrodisiac properties and hoping that nature would take its course: it hadn't, but the appearance of the fleshy underside of the creature's carapace reminded him of that expensive and fruitless meal. As the creature scrambled at the helmet, its fingers finding purchase as it latched on and squeezed tighter, a lipless mouth poked and probed the faceplate, smearing slime across the visor as it tried to find its target. Harper's gauntlets scratched at the back of the creature, trying to pull it off, but its strength was surprising, despite its size. Lashing out with its tail, the vice-like legs squeezed tighter, the protective visor cracking and crumbling beneath its strength. Harper could smell burning plastic seeping in through the cracks, then with a gut-wrenching crack, the faceplate shattered. The cold of space washed across his face, quickly followed by a more unpleasant coldness as the fleshy meat of the creature poured into the confines of his helmet, pressed against his face and forced its way down his throat.


	17. Chapter 16

XVI

Lieutenant Moe 'Mojo' Jones sat impatiently in the cockpit of the dropship poised on the front of _The Eden_, a wafer thin sheet of plastic in his hands as he flipped through the pages on the electronic magazine he'd borrowed off one of his fellow pilots before embarking on this fruitless journey. The shackle had been put in place a few minutes ago, shortly after he'd lost contact with the squad, and he'd tried to adjust the gain on the communication array of the shuttle, but nothing had worked. Residual fallout from the EMP wasn't uncommon, and he'd returned to the magazine, thinking nothing off it, with the buzz of the bridge from _The Vengeance _playing in the background of the small cabin as they went about the task of syncing up the two cruisers: nothing for him to take any interest in.

He threw the magazine down in the small compartment beside his seat and returned his attention to the entrance into the bridge, frowning at the faint orange flashes that seemed to emanate within the cavernous opening. Frowning, Mojo tried to adjust the signal again, but still drew a blank. Maybe if he moved in closer?

Adjusting his harness and grabbing the controls, Mojo disengaged the magnetic clamps attached to the landing struts, gently brought the craft up, then nudged it forwards, bringing it closer to the opening.

As he did so, one of the readouts surrounding him flashed red and emitted a pulsing alarm: Mojo knew the ship well enough to know that it was the emergency recoil for one of the umbilical cords. He sat up in his seat, watching as one of the main lines snaked lazily through space and back towards the open hold and expecting to see one of the Marines attached to the tether coming in to view. Some unexpected glitch: maybe an error with one of the air regulators? Instead, the end of the line scrolled into view, and Mojo cut the engines, hovering above the hull and less than ten meters from the opening.

It was dark inside, the orange flashes had stopped shortly before the automatic recoil had been initiated, but Mojo could see the barest flicker of movement. He hit the controls for the lights mounted just below the main Gatling gun under the cockpit, the brilliant white light illuminating the bridge and the bloody shapeless blobs that floated in the breached chamber. Nothing else moved in the bridge other than the trails of gore.

"Fuck," he growled, keying his microphone into another frequency as he tried, once again, to reach the team in the bridge. Either the gory remains were one of his team, or the sensors on the ship were wrong, and the explosive decompression had taken out some poor, unfortunate bastard that had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. He didn't know which option he'd prefer.

Still unable to raise any of the insertion team, he keyed in a direct line to the bridge of _The Vengeance_.

"_Vengeance_, this is shuttle Alpha-02, something's wrong with the operation."

"Copy that, Alpha, are you sure? Shackle remains in place, we're syncing up the craft to ours now. Ex-fil your team now and return to base for decon."

"Exfiltration is a no-go, I can't raise them on any channel… and there's something wrong with the bridge. Patch through to my nose-cam, see what I'm seeing."

"Copy that, Alpha, patching it through… Christ, what's that?"

"Looks like blood to me," Mojo responded. "Only thing is, I don't know who it belongs to. One of us, or one of them."

There was a lull in the communication, a brief murmuring away form the pickup, then a new voice came on.

"This is Commander Thorn, who am I speaking to?"

"Mojo, sir… ah, that is, Lieutenant Jones. Shuttle Alpha-02."

"Okay, that's fine. Can you see _anyone _in the bridge, maybe something the camera can't pick up? Further back, anything… anything at all?"

"Ah," Mojo nudged the craft closer to the opening, as close as he could without compromising any safety margins. He made a visible effort of peering into the bridge, as is Thorn was checking on the job he was doing. "No, nothing."

"Umbilical cords?"

"One came back in on its own, under an emergency recall from the operator's side. The other two are still out there."

"Reel them in," Thorn commanded. "Slowly."

Mojo keyed in the remote sequence, activating the winches in the hold and watching as the remaining two cords slowly coiled back into the open hold of the craft. He watched in silence, holding his breath, as the ends of the cords came in to view.

One line had been severed by a blade, the tip ragged and frayed, while the other was attached to a shapeless hunk of meat partially cased in the shell of a suit, the tattered stumps oozing blobs of crimson and scarlet. Mojo blanched at the sight, remaining silent as the corpse slipped from view and into the open hold.

"That was one of ours," Mojo announced, unnecessarily. "Chuck, I think."

"Wasn't decompression, either," Thorn muttered. "The bastards can survive in vacuum."

"Sir?" Mojo was more than confused. Who was he talking about? Nothing could survive in vacuum, the bloody chunks of Marine that were floating in the bridge and now in the cargo hold were a testament to that fact. Despite what Thorn was saying, Mojo figured that decompression had something to do with it.

"Nothing," Thorn snapped. "Close up and pull out of there. Return to base and get decontaminated. And keep clear of that opening."

"What about Marcus and Harper?"

"They're dead," Thorn said, matter-of-factly. "We can deal with their corpses once we get back to Gamma and get this infestation under control."

_Infestation_, Mojo mused silently as he grudgingly activated the controls again and slowly swung the dropship around, turning the flank of his craft on the bridge and sealing up the cargo ramp, pulling away from _The Eden_ and returning home. _Surely he means infection…_

The dropship skimmed the surface of _The Vengeance _as he followed the curve of its hull, returning to the airlock on the underside leading to the hanger and keying in the automatic launch sequence. Flushing the cargo hold with oxygen, he unsealed the door of the cockpit and clambered down a short flight of stairs into the vacant hold. Large enough to carry an APC, the hold looked enormous when it wasn't loaded: it wasn't very often Mojo ferried anything other than APCs, equipment or even a fully-loaded squad of Marines ready for action. The single limbless torso lying on the deck rolled back and forth as the dropship slowly lifted back into the hold of the mother ship and entered the faux gravity field, pools of blood that had previously floated in the hold spattering the deck all around. The ship shuddered as it came to rest in its mooring, and Mojo activated the cargo ramp, gripping the hydraulic support struts as they slowly lowered the ramp. The corpse toppled and slipped across the desk, tumbling to the ground outside the shuttle and rolling to a stop at the foot of the ladder. Mojo was quick to grab a sheet of tarpaulin from the side of the craft and drape it over the torso, taking one last look around the cargo hold of the craft before exiting.

He failed to notice the foetal shape of a coiled creature lurking behind the winching system the three umbilical cords were attached to. A creature that unfurled itself from its hiding place as Mojo left the craft, looking around its surroundings as the throbbing engines of the dropship whined and died.

Its life had been short, but it had never known an existence without its brethren, the hive, around it. Following its journey in the small shuttlecraft, though, it felt… distant: alone. For the first time, the constant activity of the hive was nothing but a distant, ethereal murmuring in the background of its mind. It couldn't understand what had happened to others of its ilk, all it knew was that it was alone, and that a new instinct had kicked into life in itself; an instinct to spread itself through the ship, to consume the life around it and create more of itself. Where there was one, there should be many.

It crept closer to the lip of the ramp, hissing softly to itself as it tentatively extended its senses into the busy landing bay outside the craft, its wide range of sensory apparatus buzzing with the information it was pulling in; the sounds of busy craft around it, the taste of the men and women around it, and the bioluminescent energy they radiated pulsed like a welcoming beacon. It knew from its time nesting in the bridge of _The Eden _what these humans were capable of, however: that its brethren had been slain by others with their weapons and that there would be plenty of these in the craft it now resided in. It would need to be careful as it went about its business.

To go about creating more, it would need a queen: a matriarch figure to be head of the hive, and its role as the pro-creator was clear. Establishing a nursery, the heart of the new hive and the inner sanctum where generations to come would be birthed, would be its main task, and a task it would not undertake lightly. Extending its senses as far as it could, it knew the coast was clear, and it scuttled out of its hiding place, clinging to the outer hull of the dropship and following the contours of the craft as it clambered around onto the roof, pressing its body close to the pylons and missile pods of the vehicle that had been folded over on itself when the vehicle had docked. It kept itself low against the olive-hued skin of the craft, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Just like its queen, it had no concept of time as a man did; it simply lay in wait, biding its time until the perfect opportunity arose.

Around it, the hustle and bustle of the hanger continued, men and women strapped into yellow exoskeletons that the creature knew it needed to be wary of, a genetic memory inherited from its parent and her traumatic battle with one such machine.

It waited, silently, pushing its bulk back into the recess of one of the engine intake valves, maintaining a low profile until the room became less active. And then…

It pulled itself to its full height, crouched once more then propelled itself into the air, clawing at the ceiling and scrambling along the slick surface, crashing through one of the grates covering the air ducts and vanishing into the network of conduits that burrowed through the length and breadth of the ship.

0

Thorn watched from his command post on the bridge as details of armoured and armed Marines ran through the ship – _his _ship – and took up positions by airlocks along both sides of the craft. Originally, he'd planned to double the guards around the docking clamps on one side of the craft, but with the sudden and unexpected fact that the creatures he was facing could survive in vacuum, and in fact seemed unhindered by the lack of atmosphere or gravity. While a small contingent of his Marines were specially trained in zero gravity operations (of which he'd lost three already) the creatures seemed to have a natural flair in the harsh environment, and he wasn't prepared to put his people in any unnecessary danger. Instead, he'd opted to spread his men thinner across the craft, making sure all possible routes in and out the craft were secured, with several other squads placed at regular intervals along the length of _The Vengeance _to provide backup and immediate relief to any potential breeches that may occur from one of the creatures trying to burrow their way in.

The loss of the three men from the breeched bridge wasn't enough to fluster Thorn, but it was enough to make him reconsider his original plan, which had caused Cray no end of pleasure to see him squirm.

"Things not working out, are they?" he said, barely suppressing a smug grin.

"Everything's under control," Thorn was more than confident in his approach to the situation, waving to one of the holographic displays that showed the front of _The Eden_ and the shattered window entering into the bridge. Since he'd pulled the dropship out of there and positioned a pair of camera drones at the bow of the ship, nothing else had happened in the opening. He had a number of other sensors running along the hull of the vessel, an early warning to any creatures attempting to run up to the craft and knock on the door. So far, there hadn't been any activity.

"You've coupled us up with a ship in quarantine, and potentially exposed everyone on board to a dangerous alien life form. Don't you know anything about ICC Quarantine Laws? You should pull away from the craft, scuttle it and wait for backup."

"You should shut up," Thorn warned, glaring at him. "ICC Rulings may have some weight in a controlled system, but way out here, in the Outer Rim, it's my ruling, and I made the call, with company backing. We break off from the fleet and return to Gamma, and I don't have to explain anything to you."

"You're in over your head, Thorn, and you're dragging the rest of us down the same way," Cray said, hauling himself to his feet and standing over Thorn, looking down on him with a heavy scowl on his brow. "Whatever the fuck these things are, it's only a matter of time until they get aboard this ship, and the next thing you know you're up to your ass in killer cockroaches and your name gets slapped with a court martial. You wouldn't even be able to command a rowing boat, let alone a military frigate."

"Lieutenant Cray," Thorn rose to his feet just as Cray had, refusing to be intimidated. Pushing his chest out and fixing an icy glare on him, Thorn choked back a growl before leaning in close, lowering his voice as he spoke. "You presence here is by no means a pleasant experience, and it's only through sheer dumb luck that you're here, and not over on _The Eden _with the rest of your men."

"The rest of my men are dead," Cray reminded him.

"Then you would be dead with them," Thorn countered, clenching his jaw as he kept his voice low. "And I would be a happier, I'm sure Stevens would be happier, and your father wouldn't have a miserable piece of shit mooching off his family fortune for another forty years."

Cray, blustered by the outburst, was lost for words as his mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water, but Thorn wasn't going to back down now. The company of the insufferable man over the last couple of days had slowly been grinding him down, and he'd finally had enough.

"There's higher ranking officers on this bridge who don't question my orders, don't second-guess what I'm saying, what is it that gives you the right to presume you know better than me? You treat everyone with contempt, even Stevens who's proven himself to be an asset over on _The Eden_, and to perfectly honest, I don't know how he's served with you for so long and not tried to do something like, I don't know, shoot you?"

Thorn's eyes flicked over to one of the Marines standing by the entrance and he gave a nod, watching as he broke away from his post and positioned himself behind Cray.

"The brig?" Cray asked with a smirk.

"I've got bigger things to worry about than a weasel taking up valuable men to watch over him in the brig. Your quarters will do, we'll lock the door and I'll monitor it from the security feed. And consider yourself lucky this time, Cray. If I had the choice, I'd give you a carving knife from the galley and send you over to _The Eden_ through one of the docking clamps. I doubt you know how to handle any cutlery other than the silver spoon stuck up your ass that you were born with."

Cray fumed silently as he spun on the spot and made his way to his quarters, aware of the Marine escort but refusing to acknowledge him or the fact that he'd effectively been put under house arrest. His room wasn't that far from the bridge, and he grudgingly entered the entry code and stepped into the room, listening as the door rolled shut behind him and the electronic lock was purged of its access codes, sealing him in the room. He knew that if anything did happen to the ship, he would at least be safe from any creatures sealed up in here, and if the order was given to abandon the ship, then all locks would spring open and he could walk free. A free ride.

He sat on his cot, smoothing out the sheets then unfastening the buttons of his uniform and stripping down to his white vest and jockeys, folding his clothing and placing it carefully at the foot of the bed. Thorn was right about a couple of things, though: had he been aboard _The Eden _when everything had happened, he would more than likely wound up dead, or worse… food for the baby monsters, maybe. And as much as he was loath to admit it, Thorn did seem to have matters in hand, as far as the security of the ship was concerned.

He lay back on his cot, closed his eyes, and drifted into a light, dreamless sleep that his aching body welcomed. Although he hadn't been in the combat himself, his muscles were tense and strained, as if he'd been exerting himself in the midst of the battle and not the lower ranking non-coms that were doing the brunt of the work, and he felt he was overdue the rest from the hours he'd been on duty, if not on standby.

He roused himself after a couple of hours, the juddering snort of his snore as he teetered on the brink between a light nap and deep sleep startling him awake as his eyes flickered open and he sat bolt upright. Looking around with bleary eyes, he rubbed at his jowly face and picked the crust of sleep from his eyelashes, hauling himself from the low bed and padding over to the small ration rehydrator installed in the corner of the room. He stabbed the controls with his podgy finger, retrieving a plastic cup of water, which he drained before tossing the cup aside.

"Hot as hell," he muttered to himself, trudging to the enviro-con panel and trying to turn the cool air up.

It was already on maximum, but it didn't feel like it.

Cray thought about contacting Thorn for a moment, asking if he'd disabled the environment controls for his room, but decided against it. If he had, then the bastard would love seeing him sweating and pleading for help. And if he hadn't? Well, he had other things to keep his mind occupied, like turning the conjoined ships around, so fixing it would be the last thing on his mind. He was sure he could handle it and sort it out himself.

He pried at the edges of the console and pulled the panel from its housing, looking at the wiring behind the flat black controls. Nothing seemed out of place: blue wires linked to blue contacts, red to red, green to green; no wires looked burned out, no fuses smoking. He replaced the panel and looked at the ventilation grille at the foot of his bed, placed his hand before it. It was definitely spewing out warm air, despite what the readout said. Frowning, he removed the catches from the grille, retrieved his datapad from his uniform pocket and activated the screen, using it as an improvised light while trying to make out the details of the shaft that ran parallel to his room. With the grill removed and his head in the darkness of the duct, his features illuminated by the dim glow of his pad, Cray could hear different sounds from around the craft: muted conversations, dull thumps that could be patrols or the straining engines of the ship, and the distinct hum of the air recyclers that continuously scrubbed the air of any impurities and re-circulated them.

The shaft the hole opened up to was large enough for Cray to fit his head and shoulders in, and if he squeezed, he could also get a hand into the confines of the tunnel with him. The walls of the shaft were neither cool nor warm, but _wet_, as if coated in something like lubricant or resin. An unfamiliar smell permeated the tunnel, like oil mixed with melting rubber, and as he pulled his hand away, he could see thick strands of the secreted resin joining him with the wall. It was the source of the smell, and also seemed to be responsible for the warm air that was rushing into his cabin: a larger block of the material, whatever it was, had blocked off the tunnel further up the shaft where it had started to coagulate and congeal. Whatever air found its way through the blockage seemed to have the coldness of the breeze stripped by the shapeless mound: did that mean it was a conductor, or an insulator? Cray couldn't remember, he wasn't a technician in any way, shape or form, but he bet that if he could displace the mound, he would get the cool air redirected to his room. He pulled himself from the opening, looked around the room for something that he'd be able to use to prod and poke the mound, and came up with the metal leg from a chair he quickly managed to break apart by hitting it against the floor.

"Is this long enough?" he mused to no one in particular as he went to return to the entrance to the shaft.

The muted darkness of the shaft seemed to shift, and Cray froze. Did the craft have a population of rats? Since the crew had stopped using the freezers for deep space travel so much following a research paper that stated prolonged periods of time in stasis actually had a destabilising effect on some internal systems, the rodent problems that had plagued settlers and explorers in the times of Columbus and Polo some seven hundred years ago had returned once more. It wasn't unheard of to have nests of over fifty or sixty vermin aboard any given spacecraft at any time. He peered into the shaft, prodding the organic mound with the broken chair leg, tried to hammer a hole into the obstruction, but the mound had hardened and formed a toughened shell, impenetrable to his attempts at breaking through.

Muttering under his breath, he turned his back on the hole and went to grab the grille to replace it: if there were rats aboard, he didn't want to have them swarm through his quarters. He was resigned to the fact that he wouldn't be able to fix it himself, and would have to see if he could arrange something with Thorn. He spun on his heel, grate in hand…

And dropped it as a dark creature before him almost poured out the opening, limbs unfurling from the confined space is it squeezed itself through the impossibly small opening. With its armoured torso glistening and its jaws slick with mucus, it took a smooth, effortless step towards Cray and wrapped the six digits of one of his oversized hands around his neck. The cold chill of the creature felt unreal to him: he'd expected it to feel smooth and slick, but instead the coarse texture of its palms irritated his skin, covered in ridges and calluses that rubbed against him. He tried to step back from the creature, his vocal cords freezing while his bladder relaxed and warmed his leg with the stream of urine that escaped from him. For a moment, he could smell the strong scent of his own waste, then it was masked as the creature advanced and clamped its second hand around Cray's face, cupping his chin and wrapping its long digits over his face, pressing against his lips and nose, filling his olfactory senses with a stronger concentration of the dizzying combination of oil and rubber that had lingered in the shaft. The alien rolled Cray's head from side to side, almost as if inspecting its catch, then leaned closer, its thin lips rolling back over impossibly sharp teeth and its jaw opening, like a lover moving in for a kiss. In the depths of the dark creatures cavernous maw, Cray could see the glimmer of a second set of teeth, dripping wet with the same thick saliva that oozed down its pointed chin.

Despite his predicament and his obvious impending death, Cray actually felt a smile flicker across his lips. He _knew _that Thorn would fuck up eventually, and he was right: here was conclusive price that linking up with _The Eden _had been a bad idea, and opened up _The Vengeance _to potential infection. His smile quickly faded as he suddenly wished he hadn't been present when Thorn was wrong.

The creature wrapped its tail around Cray's waist, held him tight, and it lunged, the piston-like ramrod of its inner jaw smashing through his skull, boring through flesh and ripping at the pink yolk within his skull. The devastating blow had been enough to instantly kill Cray, but the creature held tight to the limp body with both talons and tail, retreating to the opening of the airshaft and squeezing its malleable form back into the tight confines of the ductwork and pulling Cray's form with it, impartial to the sounds of flesh tearing and bones snapping as the oversized man was dragged through the limited spaces of the tunnels, to a larger junction where the creature had started the slow process of building its new hive.

Had Cray been alive, his eyes would have seen the irregular patterns that covered the walls, the looping structures that resembled internal organs made external and covered in hardening resin, and the large puddles of condensation that pooled around the base of the hive material. But he wasn't, and his glazed eyes stared vacantly at the floor where the alien finally and unceremoniously dumped him before beginning the process of reforming and transforming the dead body.

Already, the survival instinct of the alien was at work, the urge to prolong its existence by increasing its numbers driving it onwards as it rearranged the body of Cray, snapping what few bones remained intact as it reshaped the corpse into an ovum-shaped mound of carrion and dripped its reconstructive saliva on the mound. While the saliva itself would only serve to harden the mound into a solid shape much like the rest of the hive, the creature knew instinctively that the barb of its tail, normally used to incapacitate potential hosts, could also introduce elements of its DNA into the corpse. Nature would always find a way to survive, and though there was no queen present in this new hive, the transmogrification of corpse to egg would provide the seeds of a new colony of the demonic creatures.

The lone creature alive in the shafts, aware that the spore it had infected the corpse with, returned to the larger of the walls it had reshaped, clambering onto its perch amongst the swirls and curves of the redesigned nest and rested, its senses focused on the growing egg and the immediate area around it. From that egg would come the parasite; from the parasite, the queen; and from the queen, the hive.

The alien was her protector and procreator: it, too, would need to change to adapt to its role to survive, for without it, there could be no others.


	18. Chapter 17

XVII

Stevens sat motionless at his desk, staring glumly at the cup of ominous dark liquid that sat steaming in front of him. The desk wasn't a desk as such, but a sheet of decking plate balanced on top of two packing crates inside the office area of the hangar. The fake desk complemented his drink, which wasn't really coffee, but a synthetic base loaded with stimulants and the subtle taste of what could only be described as wet cardboard.

"You still pissed off?"

Stevens didn't look up from his coffee to acknowledge Dawes with a response: instead, he turned slowly on his seat and glared through the opaque windows of the office, squinting as he made out the blurry shapes of Marines moving back and forth.

The hangar had been modified to accommodate the Marines as best as it could, with a third of the area dedicated to sleeping and weapons maintenance: crates set up to create low walls and corridors, individual areas cordoned off into makeshift rooms, each decorated with photographs or other personal artefacts that the Marines may have had on their person. Another third had been dedicated to exercise and recreation, with improvised weightlifting rigs, craps tables and a half-size touch football field marked out with neon-glow paint. The final third had been designated as the combat zone, areas cordoned off around the doors where conflict would occur if the creatures tried to break through into the room.

"Been trapped in here for a week now," he sullenly muttered, pushing his cup around the desk before moving it next to the three other cups of cold, dark liquid that he'd left from earlier in the day: all were untouched. "Confined in this god damn hangar while these creatures create havoc all over the rest of the ship. They could be dead. Or worse."

"And the men here just keep playing football and betting money they don't have."

Stevens finally acknowledged Dawes as he looked up and nodded glumly.

"And we've been here for what, six days now? Seven?"

"A week," Dawes nodded. "Last we heard from _The Vengeance _was that they'd been successful in getting us turned around, and we're heading back to Gamma. That was four days ago, we've heard nothing since."

"And you've tried raising them?"

"Couple of times," she nodded. "No response."

"Cause we're in quarantine," Evelyn muttered, also present in Steven's small administrative area. "We're potentially infected, so they're treating us like lepers. They'll probably let us know when we're going to dock, that'll be the next thing we hear."

"Expert in Marine goings-on, now, are we doc?"

"Familiar with ICC Quarantine," she shrugged. "If your people are playing by the rules, then it's pretty standard procedure."

"And we can't find anything else out there?" Stevens waved a hand in a vague direction towards the rest of the ship. "No pockets of survivors, nothing on the internal coms or security feeds?"

"Still nothing. The longer we stay cooped up in here, the more cameras we loose to the creatures or the nests that they build. I don't know how many of those things there are now, but we have to assume that the whole ship is overrun now. I've been working closely with Knight to see if there's anything else we can do, but every day, more and more systems become inoperable."

"Knight," Stevens snarled, curling his lip as he twisted on his seat, leaning back and looking through the open door of the office at the emotionless Marine who stood at the foot of the ramp leading into the small shuttlecraft he'd arrived on: six foot tall, with short blond hair cropped close to his skull and a muscular build that put most Marines to shame. Cold blue eyes scanned slowly from side to side, taking in the details of the hangar. As his eyes fell on Stevens, he raised a hand and performed a slow salute before continuing his vigil over the hangar. "God damn Thorn… of all the people he could have sent us."

"You don't like him," JT said. It wasn't a question, but a statement. Stevens nodded slowly anyway.

"Not a lot of Marines like working with synths," he shook his head, then turned to look at Dawes. "I don't even know how you can work with him."

"Because I have to, and because I don't take notice of all the different myths and legends that do the rounds in the barracks. You could do a lot worse than take everything you're told with a pinch of salt, you know that?"

"Myths? Legends? We all know that synths are twitchy as fuck; look at Knight, he's a combat model synth that hasn't actually seen any combat in any unit: This is like a baptism of fire, and throwing him into this shit unprepared is crazy. If his programming hasn't been tested out, he could flip out and kill us all. With him being a combat model, he's had his programming tweaked just a _little_ too much for my liking, too. He can actually _hurt _a human within his normal operating parameters. Look at what happened with that crazy fucked up science droid."

"Rumours, all of them," Dawes shook her head.

"What rumours?" JT asked, warily eyeing the synthetic combat model, Knight being both his name and model type. "I always thought droids couldn't hurt people at all."

"Combat droids can, obviously because of their combat role, but only within certain parameters: force can be used, incapacitation of a target but not death; at least not the death of a human. They're normally armed with baton rounds, safety bullets, enough to stun or knock out someone.

"Now," he carried on, "About twenty five, maybe even thirty years ago, there was a ship that went missing in the outer rim sector, on the cold side of Zeta Reticuli: a routine mission for a small platoon of Marines on patrol, on their way to help out a colony who was having problems with their communication relays. So, this squad has a science droid with them, a synth with the right knowledge in its tin can head to fix the relays and get the colony up and running again."

"So?" JT shrugged his shoulders. "What's the big deal about that? Didn't the synthetic fix them right?"

"Shortly after they were due to report in, the ship vanished out of sight. A few years later, they find the ship floating in the middle of nowhere. Like the Mary fucking Celeste, you know? Lights on, systems going, but no sign of anyone aboard. A salvage squad was called in, broke into the vehicle and had a good look around. Turned out the science droid had flipped its lid, like a switch had been turned on in its head that sent it crazy. During travel to the colony it was supposed to help, it had pulled itself out of the sleep cycle and ejected all the other sleeper capsules while the poor bastards were asleep, flash-froze them and killed them instantly. Details are sketchy, but they say they found the legs of a Bishop model science droid down in the main hangar, but no body, like he'd held on to a grenade too long and blown its torso apart, like it was trying to come to terms with the guilt of everything."

"And they never made it to the colony? I mean, they didn't report anything about erratic behaviour?"

"The colony wasn't _there,_" Stevens placed his hands flat on the desk and pulled himself up from his seat. "The other part of the rumour is that the rock they were supposed to go and help had been attacked, a barrage of nukes that had scoured the planet clean. Now, the _Sulaco_ had enough ordinance aboard it to level a city… they say that the synth brought the hammers crashing down on that colony..."

"It's all rumours," Dawes snorted, shaking her head. "I think it would have made big news if a Bishop model synthetic had wiped out a colony _and _a platoon of Marines."

"Would it? Not if they tried to cover it up."

"They? Who're 'they'?"

"Anyway," Stevens shrugged his shoulders. "That's the word that goes around in the barracks. Synths aren't trusted at all. I mean, if a Science Droid could freak out like that and kill that many, an android with its primary laws firmly in place…" he stood and glared at Knight, who still stood motionless by his shuttlecraft, then fixed him with an icy stare. He saluted again, and Stevens ignored him, leaning in closer and lowering his voice. "If a science model could do that, think what a combat droid with _modified_ primary laws could do to us all."

"But it's all a myth, right?" Evelyn looked from Stevens to Dawes; the former seemed convinced by every word he'd spoke, but the latter seemed impartial to it all.

"Thorn wouldn't place us in any more danger than we already are," Dawes shook her head.

"Pretty hard to do that, anyway," JT muttered glumly. "A twitchy robot that may kill us all, or a ship filled with monsters that may kill us all. I'd rather have a bullet going in my brain than a creature coming out my chest."

"Just keep an eye on the fucker, that's all I'm saying."

"Lieutenant Stevens?"

The flat, emotionless voice of Knight echoed in the office, and the combat droid entered the antechamber with strong, confident strides, coming to a halt in front of the desk and saluting once more. Stevens grimaced: his temporary field commission had been the second unwelcome surprise that had arrived of Knight's one-man cargo vehicle, a new set of ID tags labelling him as the officer in charge of the operation aboard _The Eden_. It was a necessary evil in order that Stevens could be in charge of combat synthetic, but he could have done without both of them. Now, he had to keep one eye on his men, another on the doors for any sign of a breech, and a third for any sign of Knight twitching and breaking down.

"What is it?" he snapped, glaring at the solid, angular face of the man mountain that loomed before him. The _artificial _man mountain. Knight looked down on Stevens, but didn't seem to react to the indifference in the way he was treat.

"Lieutenant, there has been increased activity on the periphery of the motion sensors placed around the perimeter of the hangar. Analysis of all available combat data suggests that the creatures may be preparing for an assault on our locus."

"What combat data do you have to analyse?" Stevens snapped, grabbing his pulse rifle from beneath his desk and cocking the weapon, looking at the glowing readout on the side of the device that said he had a full magazine with ninety-five rounds ready. Knight went to answer, but Stevens shook his head, indicating he wasn't interested. "Get everyone ready, rouse the troops. JT, you and Evelyn grab your weapons but stay back in this office."

"Arming civilians with military firearms is a direct violation of the United Systems Colonial Marines directive seven nine four…"

"Stow it, tin can," Stevens ordered. "Make a mental note and take it up with Thorn later. Providing you don't tweak out on me and kill us."

"Sir," Knight nodded, touching his brow with the tip of his finger, then a Stevens went to walk away, he reached out and grabbed his arm. His touch was surprisingly soft considering his sizable bulk and power, but Stevens recoiled from the touch nevertheless. "I understand you dislike working with me, but I assure you my programming is perfectly intact, and my body fully prepared for combat. All my systems are well within standard operating parameters, and I assure you that it is my mission to aid, support and protect this squad."

"I'm sure that's what the science droid said before it flushed its crew out into deep space," Stevens shook his head.

"You refer to the events of the _Sulaco_, I presume. A spacers myth popular with the most of the new generation of the USCM. I assure you the reports of this situation have been grossly exaggerated and blown out of proportion, and that a 'Bishop' scientific model of artificial person would not be capable of flushing a crew into deep space, or firing nuclear payload at a colony; populated or otherwise. The access codes and levels alone…"

"Take your hands off me," Stevens growled. "Get the men ready: if you're so damn sure that something's coming, then get them roused and ready. Dawes, give the tin man a hand."

"You really don't trust him," muttered Evelyn, adjusting the flak jacket she wore beneath her grubby lab coat. Additional armour was available for everyone, but coveralls and BDUs were in limited supply, no one had anticipated the assault to last as long as it had. Both Evelyn and JT had to make do with the clothing they had: after a week of rationing water and wearing the same clothes, everything was starting to show some signs of wear and tear, and the smell that lingered around the living area of the hangar was a strong, musky scent that seemed to cling to the clothing everyone wore. Even Knight, synthetic to his core, seemed to exude the same musky odour in the pearls of artificial sweat the rolled down his forehead.

"They make those things too real," Stevens muttered, watching as the android approached different pockets of Marines and urged them into action. There wasn't that many men left, almost half of them had been killed in the initial failed strike into the heart of engineering, and it didn't take them long to drop whatever activity they were engrossed in and prep themselves for war: standard issue undergarments became obscured by coveralls and armour, helmets secured in place and magazines slammed home into rifles. Stevens strolled out into the main area of the hangar, cradling his pulse rifle, and looked at the small data pad he held, at the screens that did indeed indicate a surge of movement in the outer corridors that encompassed the hangar. It wasn't the first time in the past week that the outlying sensors had picked up the movement, but it was the first time such a massive signal had been encountered. He handed the tablet to the closest Marine, who nodded and sent it down the line, lettering all the men and women assembled there to see what they'd been pulled together for.

"It's a big shift, bigger than anything we've seen before," Stevens said, nodding towards Knight. "Knight thinks they may be getting ready to attempt a break in. I'm loath to admit it, but I agree with him. It's been too long since we last seen anything of those bastards, and this sudden rush around us suggests an attack: maybe even a coordinated assault. I want seventy percent of you by the main elevator, the other thirty by the rear hatch leading back into the engineering compartments: we've got this place sealed up pretty tight, they're the only way they can come in here, it'll be like a bottle neck. Incinerator units at the ready for the bodies, but use them sparingly. Keep an exit to the dropship open. If it comes to it, we'll seal it up and pop the airlock, flush them out into space: it's also the primary way we we've got of putting out any fires that may spread, so stay frosty, people."

Just as Stevens finished talking, one of the motion trackers set up on a tripod by one of the entrances came to life, a trilling succession of high-pitched rings that indicated something was moving within its limited range: normally able to track up to a kilometre, the systems of the lower engineering decks were powerful enough to disrupt readings enough to mean they were dialled down to their minimum settings, less than fifty meters.

The sudden sound of the motion tracker, and the fact that the creatures were now the closest they had been in a week, made Steven's heart skip a beat and the floodgates holding back the rush of adrenaline swung wide open. He split the squad in half, sending them to the separate entrances, and beckoned Dawes and Knight closer to him.

"You two, stay back by the office with JT and Evelyn: breakout the M42A's and offer sniper support to the squads covering the entrances. You can snipe, can't you?" This last comment was directed to Knight, who chose to ignore the condescending tone and nodded slowly.

"I am proficient in all weapons currently employed by the USCM. However, I feel I would be more beneficial in a support role with the men near the front of the assault. I can operate dual…"

"Snipe," Stevens shook his head, thrusting a scoped rifle into Knight's oversized hands and indicated the double doors leading into the elevator. "You take the lift, Dawes, take the hatch. I'll let the men on the front lines know they're getting distant support, make sure they keep out the line of fire. I'll make sure there's a pilot in the dropship, prepping it for vacuum if the need arises."

He stormed over to the elevator doors, where a crowd of Marines had started to gather, waving to a pair of pilots and directing them to enter the dropship and prepare the vehicle in case the backup plan of flushing the hangar had to be fallen back on. They nodded their understanding and moved to the ship – perhaps a little too enthusiastically? Stevens shrugged his shoulders as he moved, knowing that the pilots weren't trained or prepared for hard combat as much as the standard Marines, the grunts, were. Acknowledging that fact even more as he approached the soldiers huddled around the entrance and behind the sentry units, he motioned for the remaining pilots to take up positions closer to the back: everyone would fight, but in different capacities. Stevens hunkered down behind a packing crate in the middle of the group, cradling his pulse rifle and checking he still carried as much ammo as he could: he also fingered the bandoleer of grenades that were slung loosely over his shoulders, the different shaped projectiles with different coloured caps that each served a different purpose: some he would happily use, others he would hesitate to employ at the moment, but if push came to shove… There was a special little green-capped grenade he'd keep back for the worst-case scenario, like a warriors death knell.

"You spook us about that damn 'droid," JT's voice crackled over the com unit Stevens wore, "Then you leave us in his care? What the fuck's that about?"

"Live with it, Johnny," Stevens murmured, tuning out the complaints of the civilian pilot and keeping his eyes fixed on the doors. The motion trackers had stopped sounding now, meaning the creatures had either retreated, or had lapsed into whatever state passed for sleep.

"Sensors indicate they are still out there," Knight's monotonous voice droned over the radio. "Just on the other side of the door. Perhaps they are assessing the situation as we are ourselves."

"Can't we switch you to silent mode, or speak-when-spoken-to mode?" Stevens snapped. "Keep the line clear."

Minutes passed, and Stevens remained crouched in position, the muscles in his legs aching as he held his stance: others around him weren't so disciplined as they shifted their weight from one foot to another, and diverted their attention from the door to others around them: the tense atmosphere of the pre-combat gathering was starting to wane and distractions were suddenly aplenty.

"Where they at?" whispered one of the men behind Stevens, speaking louder than he thought as his voice carried far in the silent hangar.

"Don't know," his companion answered, his voice slightly more subdued. "Should've given us more shit to deal with then these, though. Gimme a pig any day…"

"Phased plasma infantry guns against those things?" snorted the first. "Why not just give us all SADARs so's we can blow us all to hell? Damn it, Craig, don't talk bullshit. Frigging heavy infantry for a handful of man-sized mutants. Fuckin' idiot."

"Shut it and keep your attention on the doors," Stevens snapped, peering at them himself and frowning. There was something not right, something that seemed out of place. The doors still held fast, they hadn't shown any sign of being breeched. It wasn't possible that both the motion trackers and the periphery sensors were glitching at the same time, was it?

"Front line," Steven spoke up, looking towards one of the men closest to front of the defensive positions. "Status check, what are those doors like?"

"Looks secure, LT," one of the Marines shouted back. "Locks still holding."

"Disable the sentry units, check it out."

Apprehensively, the Marine rose to his feet and cautiously edged forwards, the muzzle of his weapon trained on the door he approached and remaining fixed there until he was within a couple of feet. He lowered his weapon and gently pressed against the door, satisfied that it remained firmly in place, before turning back to the awaiting Marines and giving the thumbs up.

Even if he hadn't turned his back on the door, the fate of the Marine would have been just the same.

The doors, still locked together, shook violently with a deafening thud and impossibly seemed to be coming away from the wall with a deafening screech of protesting metal. The ragged edges of the door were smouldering as they came free, soft and pliable and spewing acrid fumes from the powerful chemicals that had been working their way through the frame from the inside of the lift. The heavy doors toppled to the ground, the overwhelming weight of the barriers crashing down on the Marine that had just checked them and pinning him to the ground, the immense weight of the damaged structure crushing his lower limbs while he screamed hysterically; screamed for help.

Without waiting for the say-so from Stevens, two other men from the front of the group rushed forwards, crouching low to make themselves a low target for any potential threat and making sure their comrades had as large a field of fire as possible.

While the rescue operation was under way, Stevens kept his rifle aimed at the opening while holding his breath, knowing something would be coming any moment now, even though the lift on the other side was empty, a small antechamber illuminated by a flashing illumination tube partially obscured by the sickly secretions that had consumed most of the tunnels of the engineering deck. There was no sign of the creatures, though that wasn't to say that they weren't there: their stealth capabilities weren't to be underestimated.

"How's he doing?" Stevens finally said, his voice lifting above the pain-filled mumblings of the downed soldier.

"Broken legs, he can't move, and we can't shift the doors. Fuck, he's messed up bad…"

"Okay, Knight," Stevens turned his head, seeing the combat synthetic standing beside Dawes as he'd commanded, both with the long range sniping rifles and aiming at the opened doorway. "Drop the rifle, get here."

"My programming dictates that I should remain here and offer support."

"That man's going to die if we don't get him out…"

"Removal of the casualty from the scene will aggravate his injuries. I predict he has a five percent chance of survival where he is: this drops to two percent if we attempt to remove him. My being here provides adequate cover for all people at the front. If I were to move this would endanger their lives, which conflicts with my core programming. Logic dictates two healthy men outweigh one crippled person with a low chance of survival regardless of the help available."

"For fucks sake," Stevens spat, resisting the urge to turn and plug the synthetic's head with a round from his own rifle. Would the court martial be worth it? Could he just blame the loss of the combat droid to the creatures?

"I'll help!"

Evelyn darted around the two snipers set up by the admin office and ran across the hangar, snagging an olive canvas satchel filled with medical supplies as she stormed past it and weaved through the gathered Marines, sliding to the floor beside the fallen Marine while the two men beside him dropped to a low crouch and kept their weapons trained on the opening, providing cover while Evelyn worked over her patient. Stevens hauled himself up from his position at the rear of the ranks and slowly advanced on the accident, his eyes fixed on the opening and expecting the attack that still hadn't come. He reached the doctor, joined his other men in a defensive crouch, then gently placed a gauntleted hand on her shoulder as she worked.

There was barely a three inch gap between the deck plates and the fallen door, leading Stevens to know that Knight had been right about the Marine, he was more or less finished as the tissue damage to his legs was too much; beneath the heavy barrier flesh had been shredded, bones snapped and arteries severed. The deck around the scene was thick with fresh blood, a pool of gore creeping slowly out from the flattened man as he stared vacantly at high ceiling. Evelyn had given him painkillers, enough to give everything a pleasant and fuzzy numbness so he couldn't feel the crushing pain that had destroyed everything from his hips down.

"Can't move him, can't amputate anything…" Evelyn reported without looking up from her patient as she fed another dose of painkillers into the downed soldier.

"Can you make it quick?" Stevens asked, staring at the casualty. He didn't get an answer, so he looked up to Evelyn, their eyes locking as she weighed up the options she had. What _could _she do? He could see the conflict in her face in the fact he was asking her to do what doctors normally strived to avoid, but eventually she gave a slight shrug of her shoulders. "I can make it painless," she finally said.

"Do what you can," Stevens said, knowing that it would have to do. The young Marine was already silent, in shock no doubt, and wasn't up to saying anything other than whimper occasionally, as a sleeping dog would as it dreamt.

Stevens rose to his feet, prodded the edges of the fallen door with the heel of his boot, and noticed that the edges of the ragged piece or giant shrapnel were scarred with pockmarks and pits, a sign that it had been sprayed with a concentrated acid before it had been forced from its housing. He knew that the creatures had blood this potent, but without any bodies lying in the opened elevator cage, where could this much caustic juice have come from, and how had it been applied in such a perfect shape around the door. Could they squirt their blood through glands or tubes on their alien bodies, as an animal would spray urine to mark its territory? If so, then this added another level of danger to the already deadly animals: without any specialised armour, any acid spray would chew right through plating and flesh within a matter of seconds; there was no way the human body was as resilient as a bulkhead designed to keep in atmosphere in case of a breech.

He turned to look back at the casualty, the face of the young soldier passive and stoic, barely aware of the situation he was in, and he almost reached down to snag the holotag that lay beneath his cracked breastplate when he paused, a loathsome sound filling his ears: distant at first, the sound of a hundred chitinous carapaces clambering over steel panels and one another, bone against metal as the creatures advanced, leaping from wall to wall as they tumbled down the exposed elevator shaft.

Before Stevens could react, the gaping hole of the ravaged door became alive as one as a slew of demonic dark creatures tumbled into view, their ridged bodies glistening with wet mucous, jaws dripping with saliva, while those at the front of the crowd loped into view with strings of yellow ichor seeping from their deathly grins, the thick gelatinous liquid spattering the deck plating and hissing where it oxidised the surface. The swarming creatures lurched into view _en masse_, a mix of biped and quadruped terrors that clambered through the hole, spread out to either side of the opening, as well as up the wall, the creatures hugging the vertical surface as they scuttled into the shadows of the vaulted ceiling where only the motion trackers could find them, and only then if they moved.

Stevens, Evelyn and the two Marines tending the third were in the direct line of fire, there was no clear shot for any of the men behind them, so they were the first to open fire. A barrage of explosive tipped, armour piercing rounds pounded into the front-most creatures in the line up, punching through exoskeletons and spraying caustic juices where the tiny rounds made fist-sized holes in their insect-like frame. Chunks of singed flesh and severed fingers and limbs showered the floor, the acid blood dissolving anything it came in contact with, but the constant barrage of point-blank gunfire held back the aliens from their immediate position. The creatures that tried to flank the soldiers by spreading out along the walls to the left and right were easier targets for the soldiers, not only for the defensive soldiers seeking refuge behind the crates, but also the two snipers by the administrative office. The creatures tumbled beneath the assault of gunfire, but for every gruesome creature that was downed, two more took its place.

"Retreat," Stevens shouted, stepping away from the mouth of the swarm and narrowly missing having a lump of flesh torn from his face by a wildly flailing claw. As it was, he was lucky and one talon just grazed his cheek, slicing open his flesh. He pulled at Evelyn's coat, who seemed torn between her duties as a doctor and her instinct to flee the battle, the latter finally winning over the former as she allowed Stevens to forcefully remove her from her patient's side. The two other Marines closed in and stepped back, leaving the gibbering soldier beneath the door as they went like a sacrificial lamb. The creatures were quick to lunge on him, clawed hands encircling his arms and neck and the brute strength of the animals heaving at him, lifting him upwards as they wrestled him free from the doors that pinned him. While the fallen structure was quick to relinquish its grip on his upper half, it was unwilling to release his lower limbs, and with a sickening crack and exultant scream from the aliens, the Marine was torn in two, his legs and groin remaining firmly in place beneath the door while his flailing torso was pulled up and passed back along the crowd of advancing demons, his ragged wound slopping blood, entrails and filth as he vanished into the living darkness that filled the elevator, his screams of pain and terror fading into nothing as the sounds of the gunfight carried on.

"Get into the dropship," Stevens cried, his command carried over the comlink as weapons sounded all across the hangar, a deafening cacophony of gunfire punctuated by the high-pitched screeches of the falling creatures. Sporadic bursts of muzzle flash were drowned out by the torches of the sentry units as one of the technicians managed to get them back on line, splashing searing gouts of liquid fire into the mass of encroaching creatures. Some seemed to drop back from the barrage of fire, clearly intimidated by the uncanny command the Marines had over the forces of an artificial nature, while others pressed on through the curtain of smoke and fire. Limbs consumed in the conflagration trailed thick black smoke, the reek of burning rubber and oil mixing with discharged propellant, while the living torches skittered this way and that, some of the creatures dropping to the floor, while others writhed and clawed their way up the wall.

Up the walls!

He'd been so busy concentrating on pulling his men out and getting them into the sanctity of the dropship, Stevens had completely forgotten about the stream of creatures that had climbed the wall instead of flanking around the side. A couple of the Marines had tried to follow them, but those that had lifted their aim of their gaze skywards had quickly fallen as the flailing creatures on ground level barrelled into them, claws and teeth cutting through them and knocking them aside. Pulling Evelyn behind him and snatching a rifle from the prone form of a fallen Marine twisted around the bubbling remains of an alien, he made she he had plenty of cover before pulling one of the grenades from his bandoleer, feeding it into the underslung grenade on his rifle before firing it into the darkened rafters of the tall chamber. The starshell grenade was aptly named, as it struck the ceiling and lodged there, bursting into a bright white flare of magnesium and it illuminated the ceiling with the power of a small star. It only lasted for forty-five seconds, but it was long enough to show that the creatures that had ascended the wall were nowhere to be seen.

"Fuckers have breeched," he screamed, before reiterating his previous command. "Fall back, into the ship. We need to flush the hangar!"

A second barrage of gunfire sounded, this one from the smaller squad of soldiers guarding the rear hatch leading into the bowels of the engineering compartment. Stevens bolted from the front line defence to the omther side of the dropship, where he could see the small group of men and women that had been quickly subdued by the ebony nightmares that had crawled up, along the ceiling, and dropped down behind them: their deaths had been quick but bloody, the last survivor of the group scrambling frantically onto the packing crates welded to the smaller doorway and patting down his armour for anything that could aid him: he'd lost his rifle in the confusion of the creatures dropping to the ground, and seemed to have lost half of his hand in the skirmish. Indeed, the drooling maw of one of darker-skinned bipedal creatures that slowly stalked up the crates behind him bore the remnants of his digits as they poked out the thick gelatinous ooze seeping from its lethal opening. Oblivious to the pain of the injury, the Marine had found what he had been looking for, a pair of grenades that he clutched grimly in one hand that he activated by twisting their plastic caps in his teeth. He raised them above his head to hurl into the crowd of advancing creatures, resigned to the fact the closest of the creatures would take him but refusing to go out without taking our some more and avenging his fallen comrades.

Before he could hurl the grenades into the writhing mass of tails, teeth and talons, one of the sleeker creatures amongst the attacking throng lifted its domed head, curled back the thin lips that slipped effortlessly over its teeth, and sprayed a fine jet of acrid sputum that caught the Marine on his body. The corrosive phlegm quickly began to chew its way through armour, flesh and bone, the soldier dropping to his knees and reflexively clawing at the smoking edges of his wound. His fingers started to smoulder as they came into contact with the lethal spray, and with a gurgling scream that escaped from rapidly decaying lungs, he keeled forwards, off the crates he had balanced on and disappearing into the swarm of deadly, blood-spattered creatures that swarmed around the base of the barricade. His screams stopped, and for the briefest second, everything seemed to be silent.

Then the pair of grenades that the Marine had taken down with him into the deadly mosh pit erupted into a frenzied explosion. The clamour of nightmare creatures seemed to vanish in a flash of brilliant white from the high explosive grenades that exploded in the centre of the pile. Fire and shrapnel vaporised the crowd, chewed through a large portion of the packing crates, and sprayed a fine mist of ruddy gore across the wall and what was visible of the door: a spattering of gristle and blood that quickly began to eat through the hull and the barricade of crates. With the crates weakened from the explosive damage and acrid offal smeared across them, the second way into the hangar was easily compromised, and a second wave of alien killers started to break their way into the room.

Stevens turned and ran from the fresh scene of carnage, knowing when it was time to fight and when it was time to flee: the odds were stacked against him, and he'd lost too many men to even consider making a stand.

The last of the surviving Marines were slowly making their way into the dropship now, overlapping fields of fire cutting down the horde of creatures while the wounded were hustled aboard. Evelyn was at the foot of the ramp leading into the craft, overseeing the injured and quickly checking them over in the midst of the battle: Stevens was impressed, with her level-headedness, amazed that a civilian could keep everything together while the whole platoon fell to shit around her. JT, Dawes and Knight were making their way over from the administration office, the sniper rifles having been abandoned now and replaced with the automatic assault rifles. Dawes and JT carried one weapon each, picking off targets as the creatures skittered across the hangar, while Knight carried two pulse rifles with the extended magazines, one in each hand and targeting creatures almost independently of one another. As much as he despised the android, his proficiency in combat couldn't be denied. The trio reached the dropship, covering one another while they reloaded, and Stevens hurried them into the craft, nodding to JT and Dawes while giving the merest tilt of his head in acknowledgement of Knight's prowess. The four of them remained positioned on the ramp while it slowly pulled back up into the belly of the craft, finally locking in place just as the wave of aliens reached the craft and launched into an attack, talons ripping and tearing at the hull of the craft as they sought to make their way in.

"Blow the main hatch," Stevens yelled to the pilots strapped into the cockpit, "before they rip us open!"

The pilots didn't give any form of verbal acknowledgement, but the strobe lights that flickered to life outside the craft indicated they'd done as instructed. Suspended above the main airlock in its cradle, the door into space slid open and the atmosphere was quickly drained from the hangar with a howl. Everything not fastened down was pulled free and dragged into the vacuum beyond; tools, spent magazines, globules of spilled blood that were lifted into shapeless amorphous blobs and pulled from the shuttle bay, severed limbs and corpses. Handfuls of the writhing creatures were torn from their grip on the craft and cast into the void, each thrashing their limbs and working their mouths, screaming in silence as they tumbled free of the artificial gravity.

Stevens pushed his way into the back of the vehicle and took a seat at the operations console, bringing up a view of the cameras mounted on the underside of the dropship.

He watched as the creatures spun end over end, slipping away from the opening, until they broke free of _The Eden _and breeched the perimeter. An indicator flashed on the control panel, indicating the proximity alarm had been triggered, and Stevens watched with a grin as a network of energy beams criss-crossed one another, dissecting the creatures and disintegrating the debris.

"Burn, fuckers," he smiled grimly, spinning on his chair and looking over the remains of his squad. Twelve Marines were alive and able to fight, some with minor injuries, while on the floor there lay another eight soldiers with a variety of injuries: bloody stumps where limbs had been torn free or melted with an acidic splash, torsos raked by claws and chewed by teeth, faces seared by caustic chemicals. The cramped confines of the vehicle stank of burned flesh and spilled blood, and Evelyn gingerly stepped from patient to patient, assessing their vitals before reporting on their conditions to him.

"They're all going to die," she said bluntly, guiding Stevens back to his operations desk, her voice low so I couldn't be heard by any of the ailing Marines. The flickering screens caught her attention, and she paused for a moment, savouring the vision of the last few creatures that had been sucked from the craft, as they were ripped apart by energy beams that were designed for close-combat space warfare. They were formidable against the hull of another ship, so the chitinous bodies of the creatures put up little resistance. She snapped out of the reverie, returning to the present. "A lot of them, the only reason they're still alive is because of the adrenaline pumping through them. Once that goes, shock will kick in, and that's it."

"What about if we get them to a medical bay?"

"The closest bay is five or six decks away. Even if we could get them there – and there's more injured than there is uninjured, so that itself would be a hell of a task – there's still not much I can do. Blood loss, severe trauma. I'm surprised half of them are still conscious."

"We're a tough bunch of hombres," Stevens shrugged his shoulders. There was nothing he could do from his current position, and it was quite clear that if the dropship fell from its moorings and tried an evac from the open hangar bay, it would meet the same fate the horde of creatures that had been torn from the craft. _The Vengeance _could have an IFF lockout on their automated weapons, but was that something he was going to chance?

"We've still got some creatures on our skin," the pilot from the front of the craft muttered into his microphone, his announcement accompanied by the thudding sounds of creatures walking on the top of the craft, or the sounds of talons ripping and bashing the hull. "They're not being sucked out, they're dug in too tight."

Stevens' hands stabbed the console in front of him, watching as the screen showing the open airlock flickered and changed into a view of the hangar from the camera positioned above the administration office of the flight deck. All the atmosphere had been sucked out now, and anything that hadn't been pulled out now hung suspended in mid air, twirling end over end as they hung suspended in mid air: some were inanimate objects, such as a mug or a handful of live rounds or grenades, snatched from the hands of dead men or an open ammunition crate before the force of the decompression had pulled them from the ship entirely. Other objects weren't as inanimate, the nightmare creatures lazily somersaulting and twisting where they had been dislodged from the wall, floor or ceiling, wherever they had previously clambered or gripped. None of the creatures showed any sign of expiring without any air, and by now the rest of the ship would have been sealed off from the cold depths of space as bulkheads up and down the craft would have slammed shut as soon as the rerouted failsafe protocols had finally kicked in. Stevens shook his head, watched in awe as the dropship on screen shuddered while a trio of creatures clambered over the hull and pried at parts of it: the engine housing, the joints where the wings folded over one another, anything that looked remotely flimsy they were prying with their razor-sharp nails. It was only a matter of time before one of them got lucky, or had the idea of spraying their caustic acid blood or spittle on the vehicle.

"They're still alive out there," Evelyn marvelled, echoing Stevens' sentiment and disbelief. "And they'll make their way in, eventually."

"Let me think," he muttered, then punched up the layout of the deck on a second screen beside the view of the hangar. Already, some of the floating aliens were starting to get their bearings, righting themselves and awkwardly swimming through the airless environment to reach their goal, the vehicle with a handful of survivors and potential hosts in it. Those that were lucky enough to be near a wall or other fixed surface used it to kick off, gracefully slicing through the vacuum towards the craft. He tapped the schematics before him as a quartet of the creatures simultaneously thumped down on the craft and started to tug at the engine housings. If they disabled anything, his plan wouldn't work, so he needed to move quickly.

"Disengage the docking clamps," Stevens commanded, storming across the deck littered with wounded and slick with blood, "But seal up the airlock. We've flushed what we can, and I want us to have something to breathe if this goes wrong." The doors to the cockpit slid open almost silently, and Stevens instinctively reached for the sidearm strapped to his webbing as the dark, ominous shape of the alien creature looked over him, the ridged torso and sinuous arms dragging itself over the cockpit, its lower half mangled and pummelled beyond recognition by explosive rounds. Globules of acid floated from the wounds of the creature as its tattered tail slid out of view, and Stevens let his breath out, not even aware he'd been holding it in until then.

"The glass can hold them off, can't it?"

"You'd be surprised what this thing can take," the pilot answered, though his taut expression and forced grin told Stevens he didn't really believe it would take that much more: the hammering and pounding on the rear and underside of the craft had increased tenfold, and the screen on the operations console showed a swarm of the creatures trying to jostle the craft free from its housing.

"What's the plan, LT?" the co-pilot asked. Stevens looked at his console, he would be designated the weapons officer, and that's what he needed at the minute.

"I need you to activate the weapons systems on this thing and pound that wall opposite from us with everything you can: you can probably only use the twenty-five mil cannon, but that'll do."

"Uhh… what am I aiming for?"

"The wall," Stevens shook his head. "Can manage that?"

"Of course, but I don't think that's going to be beneficial in any way…"

"You're not here to think," snapped Stevens. He didn't have time to explain anything, the last thing he needed was men who would question his every move. He looked towards the main pilot. "Once bay's got its atmo back, I need you to release the docking gear, and give this thing all the juice you can. Hopefully, we can burn enough off those bastards off while we're doing this."

"I know what you've got planned," the pilot nodded to his weapons officer, acknowledging it was okay to do what he asked.

"Think it'll work?" Stevens asked. It was a crazy plan, something that had just come into his mind as he poured over the schematics, but it was the best he could come up. No one else had come up with any other ideas, and as he was the one in charge, he needed to be doing something constructive. _Anything _would bebetter than sitting on his ass doing nothing: that was the kind of thing Cray would do, and he'd be damned if he was going to go down in military history as another asshole lieutenant like Cray.

"Fuck, yeah," the pilot nodded. He wore the same strained expression he had when Stevens had asked about the cockpit holding to the alien assault. He hoped that he naturally looked like that all the time.


	19. Chapter 18

XVIII

"You sure you want to do this?"

Evelyn looked into the eyes of the young Marine strapped into the pilot seat of the dropship; with the pupil of one eye dilated so the blackness hid almost all of the colour in one eye and the other the size of a pinhead, it was debateable if he knew anything that was going on around him, but the grin and determined look set in his face indicated he knew enough to understand the truth

of his situation: with his left forearm melted down to a shredded, acid-soaked stump and a trio of deep cuts gouged into his chest, the only thing keeping him alive were a handful of rags soaked in alcohol the staunch the flow of blood and the triple shot of pain killers and adrenaline rushing through his system. He nodded lazily.

"Yeah," he finally managed to slur, his brow and cheeks covered in a fine sheen of sweat. "Always… always wanted to be a… a vom-com. How hard… hard cannit be?"

"Be your best, that's what they keep telling us, right?" Stevens returned the grim smile as he worked around Evelyn in the confines of the cockpit, tightening the straps that held the Marine strapped into the seat and making sure the improvised controls were ready to be used. Using a number of wires and data relays donated by Dawes from the com-tech pouch she still carried, the two pilots had managed to strip down the operations of the vehicle into three basic buttons on a small ovoid that sat snugly in the palm of a his hand: release, launch and fire, three basic principles that he needed the vehicle to be able to do in order to escape the situation they were in.

Outside the craft, the atmosphere had returned to the hangar, or almost all of it had, but the gravity still remained inactive, the environment controls overridden by the operations terminal in the rear of the shuttle: the creatures could survive in vacuum, but they still struggled to move in zero gravity, just like most other animals. It hadn't stopped a handful of the aliens from attacking the dropship, their raking talons almost breaching the hull of the craft where they concentrated their attempts at penetration in the same area. It would only be a matter of time, which was why Steven's plan seemed like the actions of a mad man, and why the preparations had been rushed.

With the modified controls completed, all he needed was one volunteer. There was no guarantee that the plan would work, but regardless of the outcome, the sole pilot that needed to hit those three magic buttons would certainly come out of it worse off. If they even came out of it at all.

The young Marine strapped into the seat had been that volunteer, aware that he would more than likely perish, but it would only be a matter of time before the grievous wounds inflicted on him took his life. Better to give it in trying to help others, especially fellow Marines. _Semper fidelis_.

"Okay, one last time," Stevens pointed to each button as he spoke, making sure the volunteer was aware of what needed to be done. As he spoke, another alien creature skittered over the canopy of the cockpit, the reinforced glass chipping and cracking slightly where the bony spur on the heel of the creature gouged the window. By now, everyone in the cockpit was used to this, and paid it no attention. "Activate the cannon, release the docking clamps, and hit the thrust button. The flight path's already programmed in, it should be carry out the rest."

The Marine nodded, the motion making his eyes roll and bringing a taste of copper to his mouth. He sputtered, coughing out a wad of bloody phlegm, then slowly nodded. "Fire it, free it… forget it. I follow."

"You're a good soldier, Macmillian," Stevens nodded. He'd made a note of getting the name of the soldier that was, hopefully, going to save them and committing it to memory. When they got out of this, he was going to make sure he got the biggest damn commission he could arrange for the private. He'd already removed the holotag from the soldier when they'd helped carry him into the cockpit and sat him down, but he'd kept his weapon by him. Every Marine deserved to die with his weapon.

"Make sure… tell my mama…"

"Tell her yourself when we pull out of this," Stevens said softly, but his face bore the same strained expression of the pilot he'd talked to. The sound of metal bending and ripping echoed through the ship, and Stevens looked at his watch, as if he had an appointment to attend to.

"We're going to strap down in the rear," he quickly announced, pushing Evelyn out the cockpit and following her, then pausing at the door and turning back to see Macmillian. "You sure you can do this? Last chance."

"Get out," Macmillian managed with a grin that quickly turned into a grimace. The painkillers the doctor had given him were quickly wearing off, his rapid heartbeat thumping in his head as he tried to block out the pain. Three buttons, that was all he had to do. "I can do this."

"Good luck," Stevens saluted slowly. Macmililan turned to face the front of the cockpit, but he could still see the shape of the lieutenant in the doorway, could see the reflection of him in window like a spectral warrior. His face seemed softened, not like the war face he'd displayed in the midst of combat. _He'll make a good officer,_ Macmillian thought to himself, waiting for Stevens to leave the cockpit and announce that he, and every one else, had strapped themselves down using whatever they could to secure themselves. _He actually seems to give a shit._

"We're ready," Stevens finally said.

Macmillian paused for a brief moment, taking in the surroundings of the vehicle. He _had _always wanted to be a pilot, it had been the only reason he'd joined the Marines, but he knew that he'd have to work his way up to the training and rank needed to be in charge of a dropship. Yet here he was, two years into his military career, in charge of a fully armed UD4L dropship and about to embark on his maiden voyage. He drank in the details of the cockpit one last time, the vast array of controls and monitors he could only hope to understand, and muttered a final prayer to himself, aware all the time of the hideous creatures trying to eat into the metallic hide of the craft as a tick or flea would if they were on the flank of a dog.

Time to shake the parasites off.

Taking a deep breath, Macmillian thumbed the first button on his handheld control, watching as the fixed cannon beneath the cockpit erupted into life, a constant stream of twenty five millimetre rounds slamming into the wall of the hangar directly in front of the craft, punching holes in the wall, weakening it and leaving it buckled in the wake of the destructive and explosive rounds. A thick cloud of dark grey smoke lingered around the cockpit in a halo from the discharged weapon, obscuring the view from the window. The wall had certainly weakened, just as Stevens had planned, and with everything in motion all Macmillian had to do was press the second then third buttons. With the activation of the second button, the docking clamp holding the ship disengaged with a deep clunk, and the ship bobbed slightly as it became as weightless as the creatures around it, the power feeding the faux gravity generator cutting off as the clamp was removed. Macmillian felt the familiar flutter of weightlessness in his stomach, and he savoured it before finally activating the third and final stage of the plan.

While the first two buttons had been straightforward rewiring, the third involved a number of different sub-routines and programs that had been hastily slapped together. Autopilot coordinates, engines engaging and the flooding of the engines with fuel all had to be done at just the right moment, and everything was automated, leaving little room for error in the whole process. Gritting his teeth, he pressed the third button, listening as the powerful engines at the rear of the craft growled to life, churned to life, then the afterburners burst to life as fuel was dumped into the reservoir. The vehicle shuddered before exploding to life, bolting forwards in a straight line, following the short flight path predetermined by the flight computer, overriding the safety measures and protocol for the craft, and streaking towards the wall weakened by the large calibre machinegun. Macmillian gritted his teeth, kept his eyes wide open and greeted the wall that rushed forwards to meet him a fierce and wordless bellow that rushed from the pit of his stomach as his heart hammered against his ribcage. His finger tensed over the first button again, activating a second barrage of gunfire in the short journey that took less than a second.

The cockpit plunged into the bullet-pocked wall of the hangar, and Macmillian knew nothing more.

XXX

Stevens had braced for the impact of the craft, not entirely trusting the straps around him, but still found that the sudden movements of the craft were enough to knock him around. The power of the vehicle as the engines kicked into life and pushed the craft on like a bullet leaving a gun had been enough to rattle the fillings, but the impact of the vehicle as it struck the wall was enough rip one of them completely loose.

The sound of stationary metal yielding to the armoured hull of the rocket-propelled ship was deafening, and the force of the impact sent men less prepared for the jolt, as well as equipment not securely fastened down, sprawling across the vehicle.

The dropship lay almost silent for several seconds while everyone tried to pull themselves together, but Stevens was already to his feet, pulling together as many weapons and supplies as he could, listening to the tick-tick-ticking of the cooling engines and the oh-so-subtle sound of twisted metal settling and slowly bending while the crashed vehicle found its perfect resting point. He stumbled over groggy Marines scattered across the floor and took up a seat at the operations console once more, activating the one remaining screen – the one that hadn't been shattered by a loose ammo box or crushed by a crate filled with rations – and tried to pull the feed from the camera hangar again.

Aliens floated in the middle of the zero gravity chamber, a handful of them blackened and burned where they had come in contact with the searing flames of the engines, smoke lingering around them in thick acrid clouds. They tried to right themselves and move in the direction of the craft, but without anything to push off, they remained stranded and stunned from the blast of the engines. He panned the camera around, and saw what he wanted to check: the rear two thirds of the vehicle protruded from the hangar wall, crumpled and mangled in parts, engines smouldering, with the front of the vehicle securely embedded in the wall. His plan had worked so far, but Stevens needed to follow through with it to make sure it remained in place. Already, he could see the nightmare creatures with their glistening exoskeletons and elongated head scuttling carefully across the grated floor.

"How're we doing?" Dawes muttered, pulling herself to her feet and gripping to the back of Stevens' seat to keep her upright. He hadn't noticed, until he pulled the crashed dropship into view, how much of an obtuse angle the vehicle was, and how it listed to one side. It looked like either the autopilot had been slightly off, or some of the safety features had managed to elude the slapdash programming installed by the pilots. Either way, they're been lucky, but Stevens didn't want to push his luck any more than necessary. He pulled himself up, motioned for Dawes to take his place at the console and pointed to the keyboards beneath the monitor.

"Set up a repeating distress beacon and hack into _The Vengeance's _communication network. They may not want be willing to talk to us, but I damn well want _them_ to know what the fuck we've gotten ourselves into here. Establish a link, feed all our com signals and operational cameras through to them, make sure secure a channel and flood it with whatever information you can spam them with. If we get something pinging back from them, let me know."

Dawes took the helm and started to hammer away at the keys, tuning into her work and zoning out while she worked. Stevens nodded, pleased with her work, and caught the eyes of Evelyn, who was tending to another of the wounded Marines. She instructed JT on what to do with the wound, then stood and slowly made her way across to him.

"Did it work?" she asked, wide-eyed as she peered over his shoulder at the active monitor. He nodded his head.

"For now, but it's still just a matter of time before they break through. We've got our ass stuck in the air waiting to be buttfucked by those bastards, if you pardon the expression, and we need to move. How're the men doing?"

"Four died on impact," Evelyn murmured, wiping her hands on the stained labcoat she wore. "Another three aren't that far behind them."

"Can they be moved?"

Evelyn looked glumly at the ground, shook her head.

"Fuck," he spat, kicking the floor. "We can't leave them…"

"Their lives are in danger regardless of the situation," Knight came forwards and put his own thoughts into the conversation. Stevens hadn't asked for his opinion, and turned to scowl at him, before noticing he cradled his left forearm, his fingers soaked in creamy white lubricants and hydraulic fluids.

"I am fine," Knight offered, noticing the flicker in Steven's eyes from his face to the wound. "Combat models are designed to absorb a significant amount of damage before being unable to proceed with their duties. Repairs are underway, and I can arrange for a temporary replacement to be installed under combat situations until a qualified technician can attend to my wound."

"I'm not worried about the physical damage," Stevens muttered, turning his back on the synthetic, then thinking better of it. "You've got two minutes to sort something out, then we're leaving."

"Where?" JT looked up from the Marine he knelt beside, shaking his head to Evelyn to indicate that another injured soldier had passed on. "You want to fill in the rest of the details? You've got a shuttle wedged in the wall, where can we go?"

"I'm already on that," he said, storming past JT and into the cockpit, hoping against hope that Macmillian had survived the impact. He hadn't, the impact had jarred him more than anyone else. He still remained strapped to the pilot's chair, the harness keeping his torso upright and preventing it from toppling onto the flight console that had almost crushed him with the impact. A set of flight controls had burst through his stomach, skewering him and pinning him to the seat. Organs oozed steadily from the ragged wound that had tunnelled through his midriff, slick with blood and bile, while his dead fingers remained coiled around the miniature controls he had been given. Glazed eyes stared blankly at the crumpled cockpit and the darkness that lingered before the crashed ship, and Stevens tentatively reached across the sagging corpse, hitting one of the few buttons he knew in the cockpit and activated the floodlights on the front of the craft. One had been rendered inoperable by the impact, but one light on the right cast long, lazy shadows when it kicked to life, illuminating the boundaries of a maze made from packing crates and storage tanks before them.

"Lower cargo decks," he said with a grim grin. "They're dark, but they're not infested with the creatures: at least not yet. I hope."

"You don't know for sure they're not," JT countered, looking at the dead pilot and blessing him silently for the sacrifice he'd made for their survival. He just hoped it hadn't been a waste. "What if they are?"

"The whole ship's probably infested," Stevens shrugged, looking over the controls still operational: looking for a specific button or lever to aid his escape plan. "We had to go somewhere, and we knew that Engineering was teeming with the fuckers from experience. I took a chance. Hopefully, it'll pay off."

"And if it doesn't?"

"Then we'll be dead," Stevens said, a mater-of-fact tone to his voice. "Get a vom-com jockey in here, I need to find the loud handle."

"Front-right corner of the chair," one of the pilots announced: he'd clearly been listening to the conversation, had been eager to see the outcome of the plan to see which side of the fine line between genius and insanity Steven's idea had fallen on. The jury was still out on that.

"Loud handle?" JT was puzzled as he watched Stevens attach something to the front of the vacant chair. It was clear that the lieutenant wasn't going to answer him while he tried to complete this task, so he turned to the pilot behind him.

"Eject," the pilot simply replied, but the dumb look on JT's face implied he didn't see the link. "When an enemy gets a lock on one of these things, an alarm goes off. When they open fire, another alarm. If all decoys fail, and those rockets get closer to you, even more alarms go off. When it gets that loud, you just have to pull on the eject lever to get out of the noise."

"Loud handle," JT nodded to himself. "Makes sense."

"Okay, get back," Stevens warned, shuffling backwards out the cockpit and motioning for everyone to back up. He pulled hard on the nylon rope he'd attached to the eject handle, shielded his face as the explosive bolts attaching the canopy to the cockpit blew out and knocked the windscreen out, then the seat jolted and erupted out the cockpit in a stuttering flare of shot-lived retro rockets, arcing and tumbling into the darkness of the cargo bay beyond. With the flare from the explosive ejection still burned into his retinas, Stevens stumbled back into the cockpit, ignoring as best he could the stench of seared flesh and scorched ozone, before clambering out the popped canopy. The air of the cargo was as canned and as stale as the rest of _The Eden_, but after spending such a short time in an enclosed dropship with as many hot and injured Marines, any air unmarred by sweat, blood and death was a breath of fresh air. The opening was more than wide enough to allow easy egress from the dropship, large enough for the men to leave in pairs.

_Two by two, just like Noah,_ he thought to himself as he grudgingly returned to confines of the dropship and the expectant faces of the Marines left alive.

"It worked," he reported with a curt nod of his head, then motioned towards the men lying on the ground: those that hadn't expired in the crash or the bloody aftermath of the battle. "I need the walking wounded to help with those that can't walk. Buddy up, carry what you can and hustle through the canopy. There's quite a drop to the ground – if those of you who are less seriously injured get out first and help where you can."

"No need for that," muttered one of the savaged Marines on the ground as he hauled himself up from the floor and propped himself up in the corner. "We'll cover your escape."

"I can't let you do that," Stevens shook his head, but he could tell by the defiant look on the soldier he had made his mind up, as had the other prone troopers who were gathering their weapons, preparing for the last stand.

"The doc says we're as good as dead," he shook his head. "Some of us have a couple of hours: others not as long. Get out while you can, we'll cause as much trouble for those fuckers as we can."

As if to punctuate the point that the soldier was pressing, a deafening screech of metal pierced the cramped interior of the craft, and the craft started to rock as the creatures outside renewed their assault on the crashed vehicle. Dull thumps and muted squeals of anger and rage accompanied the attack, and Stevens looked towards Evelyn, as if she could magically heal the wounds of the brave and stubborn men.

"We still got our wits and our rifles," the soldier on the ground looked around his friends, most of them giving affirming nods of their heads. "And as long as we've got those, then we're still Marines, and we got a job to do. Besides, we still got these for close encounters," he grinned, lifting an anti-armour high explosive grenade, enough to rip apart the dropship from the inside out. He noted that other men clutched similar devices in their hands.

"A fuckin' suicide squad," Stevens shook his head.

"It's not suicide if you're already dead," the private argued, gritting his teeth as a fresh wave of pain washed through his body. Evelyn opened her medic pouch, looking for a fresh dose of painkiller, but he shook his head as he motioned to the grenade he held. "Save it for someone who needs it, doc. I got all the painkillers I need right here. Get out of here."

"Sir,' Knight decided to finally get involved in the conversation. Stevens had wondered when the psychotic killing machine would decided to get in on the conversation. The repairs he'd executed on himself were quick and ugly, though more practical in the combat environment they faced: the droid had quickly removed the useless stump of his damaged arm and replaced it with a squat metallic cylinder with a crude claw at its tip. "The private is correct, the wounds of all the men willing to stay behind are certainly mortal: life threatening. Leaving them would offer some level of resistance to the creatures, as well as expedite our escape. To carry each injured man would slow us by approximately thirty-nine percent within the first hour: for each hour after that, our speed would decrease by a further ten percent. The extra energy required…"

"Shut up," Stevens snapped, barely looking at the android. "Shouldn't there be something buried deep in your programming, somewhere, about compassion and saving human lives? Are _any _of the laws of robotics ingrained in the microchips in your head?"

"They have been modified to suite combat scenarios, sir, as you are well aware. The greater will always outweigh the fewer. We have a greater chance of surviving if all members of our team are upwardly mobile. Moving these men will antagonise their wounds and bring death quicker. I estimate the average survival percentage of these men to be fifteen percent if they are left here to fend for themselves. That will drop to five percent if we attempt to move them."

"Like talking to a fucking statistics computer," Stevens snapped. "There's still a chance they'll survive, what the fuck is your problem?"

"By your flawed logic," Knight spoke in the same monotonous voice, emotionless and impartial to the whole situation, "Any percent of survival is a viable risk. From current combat information held on file, I estimate you would stand a zero point seven percent chance of surviving an attack from an alien with only a knife to defend yourself."

In one smooth move, Knight drew his combat blade, flipped it into the air, then caught it by the blade in his good hand, pointing the hilt of the weapon to Stevens as he offered him the weapon. "Does that mean that you would be willing to engage the creatures in melee?"

Stevens didn't answer, fuming inside that Knight was right. The fact the wounded men were willing to voluntarily lay their lives down for them made the decision easier to make, but far from easy to carry out.

"Move out," he finally muttered to those that could move. "Grab what you can, what you need, and get out the cockpit. Hurry."

The cramped confines of the dropship became a buzz of activity as men rushed to grab weapons and supplies, said final farewells to friends, and exchanged promises: tell my parents this or that, kill one of those things for me. Not a tear was shed, nor any epitaph dictated. Mourning would come as sure as it did after any loss, but these men weren't dead just yet, and the time for grieving would come once this alien threat had been eliminated, and the survivors were free to organise a memorial service for the few, the brave.

"You have made the right decision," Knight nodded his acknowledgement as he grabbed a canvas bag he had filled with supplies they would need and hefted it onto his shoulder, then grabbed pulse rifle and made for the cockpit. "Be willing to make decisions. That's the most important quality in a good leader."

"I didn't decide to be a leader, I didn't decide you should be sent over here from _The Vengeance_, and I didn't decide that these men should stay here to die a senseless death," Stevens snapped.

"The decision doesn't have to be logical," Knight said, barely a glance over his shoulder as he entered the cockpit. "It was unanimous."

"I'm going to kill that fucking droid," Stevens muttered the Dawes as soon as he saw the combat unit clamber out the cockpit and descend to the floor of the cargo deck below. "Any ideas how I can do that?"

"Feed him to the aliens," she suggested, then paused as if thinking of another method of disposal. A smirk played across her lips. "Of course, the chances of him surviving that are probably significantly higher than you going up against them with a knife."

"Fucking unreal," Stevens spat. "Everything falls down to calculations or percentages… I bet it was Cray's idea to send the fucking machine over. I'll have a couple of choice words to say to him when we meet up again."

"_If_ you meet up again," Dawes nonchalantly threw the comment into the conversation, then immediately regretted it the moment it had left her lips. She looked apologetically at him, but he didn't seem to have taken any affront to it.

"You're just saying what we're all thinking," he said in a low voice. "Just try not to say it too much, yeah? Get out there," he jerked a thumb towards the open canopy. "Make sure they get far away from the craft. If the grenades set off the missiles this bird's carrying, I want to be as far away as possible. "

Dawes nodded, muttered an apology under he breath, then grabbed her gear and vanished through the improvised escape hatch. Stevens turned to face the Marines left in the ship, the handful that had elected to give cover fire and hinder the creatures as much as possible. They were all in bad shape, a couple of them barely conscious but their hands still gripping their rifles, as if defying Death the claim it had on their souls.

"I don't know what to say," he muttered, holding his arms out.

"Don't say anything, just go," the self-elected speaker of the group of martyrs waving him away. "You make a shit lieutenant, you know that?"

"That so?"

"Yeah," the response came with a grin. "People genuinely like you."

"Go figure," Stevens returned the grin. "I'll work on that. Semper fi."

The Marines each nodded in agreement, saluted weakly as they watching him turn his back on them and leave the cabin that rocked from the relentless pounding outside.

Stevens quickly made his way back into the cockpit and had his leg slung over the canopy when the creatures broke in to the dropship: he could see the back wall of the craft as it peeled open and living darkness crawled into the room in a deadly wave. Stevens went for his weapon, paused as the men and women left alive in the craft opened fire, then reluctantly retreated. Already, he knew that there would be too many to hold off, and he knew that the Marines holding grenades would follow through with their final act if it meant their comrades survived a little longer.

He dropped from the open canopy, his legs buckling under him from the drop, and he quickly pulled himself to his feet, shrugging off the hand of Knight as he tried to aid him.

"Move," he grunted, barely recognisable as a word, lurching into a sprint as he waved to the handful of survivors to clear the crash site. A heavy staccato of gunfire sounded from within the crashed shell of a vehicle, a cacophonous din of automatic weapons punctuated by inhuman screeches, then the agonising, all-too human screams of Marines falling at the deadly hands of the aliens. The battle fell silent for half a second, then erupted into a deep and rumbling growl as the ship shuddered and rocked violently, spewing flames and debris from the opened cockpit and showering the ground with blackened and charred remains: they could have been either organic or inorganic, but the high powered explosion had left little of them as identifiable. Thick smoke rolled out from the shattered husk of the vehicle, crawling up the wall like a creeping ethereal vine. The vehicle had, surprisingly enough, remained mostly intact, and still blocked the hole made between the hangar and the cargo bay: the heat from the explosion had actually welded part of the craft to the wall, making for a more secure seal, while the inside was, doubtless, a raging inferno of fire, molten slag and caustic inhuman remains boiling in their own fetid blood.

It would be enough to hold back the tide of creatures for a while, but not forever.

Stevens had been knocked to the ground from the proximity of the blast, and he slowly pulled himself up from the ground, gathering his senses and kicking aside a piece of debris that could have been a control panel from the craft at one point, then looked around the men he had still with him. His party numbered ten, including his three friends and the loathsome android: there would have been twelve, but one had been killed by the smouldering chunk of debris that had pierced him through his body armour and pinned him to the ground, his body twitching. Another had clearly had as much as he could take, and gripped a smoking weapon in one hand, the back of his head smeared across a packing crate he'd been resting against in his final moments. To say the death of the suicidal Marine wouldn't be loss would be incorrect, Stevens needed as many men and women as he could keep to survive this, but if he'd been that quick to take his own life, would he really have contributed that much to the rest of the mission?

"How are we doing?" He finally asked as he managed to rejoin the group proper, who had amassed around a large packing crate almost as large as the dropship itself. His ears rang, his head pounded, and he could taste his own blood, but he knew that he could move on. He would have to.

"The main cargo bay does indeed seem to be unpopulated by the creatures," Knight replied, his voice as monosyllabic as normal. "It would appear the creatures have been using the craw spaces within the wall to move, and not the rooms themselves. That being said…"

"I need an outlay of this bay, straight away," Stevens cut of Knight with a dismissive gesture, looking to Dawes. "Schematics, floor plans, anything that shows ways in and out. We need to find somewhere to hold up until help comes, some kind of bottleneck where we can limit access and give ourselves a fighting chance."

"We could boot up a couple of powerloaders," JT nodded towards the wall where the dropship had crashed. A pair of the toughened exoskeletons had been left to charge their batteries while not in use, and though one had been destroyed by the impact of the craft, one remained upright if not slightly battered from the rain of debris. "Move some of the cargo pods around, set up a new base…"

"Too much to cover," Stevens shook his head as he leaned over Dawes and her portable terminal. She'd found a data port near the cargo pod they hid by, and had managed to access the manifest for the deck and a three dimensional map of the cargo bay. "Too long to organise, too, especially with only one working suit. There's too many doors in and out of here, too, we couldn't possibly cover everything we need to stay alive: barely one man to each lift or door, and that's only on this floor. Four floors, a network of catwalks and balconies, we couldn't pick a worse place to… wait, what the hell's that?"

Dawes followed his guiding finger and panned the map, rolling it to get a better view of where he pointed: a hatch in the ground, twenty foot wide, surrounded on all sides by towering water tanks that were almost three stories tall. Accessible only via a thirty meters tunnel barely large enough to accommodate a fully-grown adult, it seemed like the only secure area the cargo bay could offer them.

"Water tanks," Dawes nodded. "Hatch leads to the aquatorium beneath us."

"The what?" Stevens shook his head. "I thought we were on the bottom of the ship, the lowest we could go without having to go on a skin-crawl."

"Considering you're serving on this ship, you don't know much about its layout, do you?" JT asked, an incredulous tone in his voice. Stevens fixed him with a stern glare.

"Marines don't have time to sit on their ass and read the ship manual cover to cover while drinking coffee. I don't expect you to pull a gun on those bastards and cut them down."

"Yet I do just that."

"Yeah, you do," the slightest of a smirk crossed his lips, but he fought it back. "Okay, what's the deal with this mystery basement you say we've got, then?"

"Aquatorium," he nodded, motioning for Dawes to access what files she could on it from the data jack she was accessing. Everyone huddled around her as she worked, fingers dancing a tattoo on the keypads. "You know that _The Eden's _a hydroponics ship, that normally means growing plants without soil: liquid-based farming, aquaculture. The ship does more than that, though, you know that we also have livestock in a number of different holding domes around the hull of the craft. They can be removed, replaced, moved around when we're in drydock. Each dome can hold anything: more cargo, livestock, vegetation, or even a combination of the three. I'm sure everyone here's been to the Garden, or even took a stroll through one of the arboretums: if not, you'll have at least heard about them."

Blank looks greeted JT, forgetting for a moment that none of the Marines other than Dawes and Stevens had been stationed aboard the craft.

"The aquatorium is on the underside of us, filled with water and a selection of fish. One small section's devoted to kelp farming, but the rest is filled with an abundance of marine life, coral, stuff like that. I think we're currently carrying some livestock to drop off on some oceanic moon research facility. I don't know what it is, but I know that the dome under there's one of the largest on the ship: maybe even in the fleet. Almost five hundred meters in diameter, half as deep, there's only the one way in, which is through that access hatch in the middle of the water tanks. There's you bottle neck, right there."

"It's no good," Stevens shook his head. "That bottleneck works both ways: they can't get in, but we can't get out. We need something that gives us a chance for escape in case they break through."

"Emergency airlock," JT tapped the screen where the swell of the dome ended with a small nipple-like protrusion. "We can get out onto the hull from there. There should be suits down there for… most of us."

"So we find these water tanks, and hide out in the aquarium surrounded by the fish and the water, and the only way they can break through is that hatch? For certain?"

"Like I say, the domes are interchangeable, so there's always as few links up to the craft as possible. Easier to detach and reseal. That's definitely the only way in."

"Protect it with a clutch of grenades at intervals down the access chute, we should have ourselves a reasonably secure place to hold out for the rest of the journey," muttered one of the Marines, accepting the plan before it had even been vocalised. "We held out in the hangar for a week, holding them off, and that had two doors. One entrance should be a cakewalk to hold."

"Don't get cocky, kid," Stevens shook his head, eyeing the private with uncertainty. "We didn't hold them off for a week, they just didn't bother us for a week. As soon as they tried to get in, they broke through the defences we had in place. Remember that. What about you, Frankenstein, what do you think?"

"Frankenstein was the creator," Knight responded to the jibe with as much indifference as he did any other snide comment. "I assume you're trying allude to the fact that, as a man made construct, I am equally as instable as the monster in question. I assure you, Lieutenant, my neural and synaptic systems are fully functional. And in response to your question, while not ideal, the entryway to the aquatorium would be easier to defend than any other location in the cargo bay. However, if possible, escape to another part of the ship would be more beneficial, either through freight lift or the air ducts.

"However, we don't know what the rest of the ship is like, as far as the population of these creatures is concerned. We do know that ship-wide communication has been dead for close to a week now, and all efforts from the com-tech to reroute any security feeds continue to be less than fruitful. While our sensors do pick up masses of life forms, they don't differentiate between human and alien. If the aquatorium is free of creatures, it may be the lesser of two evils."

"Metal Mickey says it's a sound plan," Stevens cast a glance over his shoulder, at the smouldering dropship and the burning conflagration that continued to keep the creatures at bay. If the fire continued to burn with such ferocity, then it wouldn't be long before the heat cooked off any ammunition left on the craft: that also meant any ordinance still intact on the vehicles missile racks. He didn't fancy being around if that happened: if it didn't blast through the hull, it would certainly open a gap in the wall big enough for the creatures to pour through. "Lets move before that thing blows."


	20. Chapter 19

XIX

The water tanks towered high above the small group as they made their way through the cramped confines of the network of support pipes and structures holding them up, the air around the storage tanks noticeably cooler in comparison to the rest of the cargo bay. Condensation trickled from the network of overhead pipes, and a steady trickle of clear liquid trickled from a cracked pipe, the escaping water vanishing through the grilled floor and into a sluice channel below the tanks, feeding the liquid back into the main aquatorium below.

The narrow alleyway between the largest of the water tanks ended in a small cul-de-sac with a hatchway fitted to the floor, dominating almost the entire walkway. Sunken an inch into the ground, an access panel lay beside the sealed opening with a keypad nestled beneath a protective transparent covering. According the Knight, the number of buttons on the keypad presented almost five million possible combinations to pop the lock, and would take days for even the most skilled com-tech to crack with a dedicated server. For the first time in over a week, Stevens encountered his first bit of good luck, and uncovered a folded scrap of paper taped to the inside of the cover. He unfolded it, not expecting much, but gave a soft laugh when he read it aloud.

"Dave, the code is "FATHER'. For Christ's sake, don't forget it, or leave this lying around for anyone to find."

"Thank you, Dave," JT muttered under his breath, watching as Stevens hammered the code into the lock. With a click, then a hum, the hatchway parted slowly, giving way to a vertical shaft with three of its four walls lined with a network of pipes and conduits and the fourth housing a ladder that spanned the distance down into the darkness of the dome beneath them.

"How far down is it?"

Stevens fumbled for one of his pouches attached the his combat webbing, pulled out a pair of plastic sticks and cracked their casing, shaking them up and mixing the phosphorous chemicals together before tossing them into the shaft. The luminous green sticks tumbled into the darkness, bouncing of the walls and spinning end over end until they hit the ground with a clatter. A muted green glow in the pit of darkness told Stevens that there was a bottom to the shaft, but it was further than he'd thought.

"About fifty meters. Give or take. Okay, first one down, quick. We need to get down there, secure the entrance, then seal this up tight."

"If only we had another sentry cannon to set up to guard the hatchway," Knight said, almost wistfully as he watched the first of the marines lower themselves into the opening. Stevens looked at him through half-closed eyes, frowning as he was deep in thought.

"A robotic gun emplacement… are you volunteering to sit watch up here?"

Knight didn't respond. Stevens raised an eyebrow, looking at the android and waiting for him to reply. Finally, the combat synth acknowledged the remark.

"Is that an order, sir?"

"Get down the ladder," Stevens shook his head. "Much as I hate to admit it, you might actually be useful to us at one point. We might need to rip you open and use some of your metal guts to heat up an MRE."

After keeping everyone covered, Stevens was the last man down the shaft, slowly making his way down the slick rungs of the ladder, almost slipping on a couple as the condensation as the surroundings became noticeably-cooler and beaded with droplets of water. As long as what covered the walls remained water and not the secreted resin that the alien creatures tended to leave behind them.

He reached the lower level to find that the remaining Marines had already fanned out to cover all entrances into the shaft, and nodded a confirmation to JT, who stood poised over the control panel. He pulled down on the lever, and all eyes turned briefly to the heavens as the hatchway far above cycled shut. The locking bolts slammed into position with a loud, deep clang, and as one, everyone assembled at the foot of the pit let out a collective sigh.

"We did a quick sweep," Dawes reported, nodding towards the different corridors, each well lit and welcoming, the confines of the area a comforting contrast to the open hangar they'd previously lived in: an agoraphobic's dream, but a claustrophobic's nightmare. "Everything seems fine. Completely deserted, though. Considering these things should be manned all the time, that's probably a little worrying."

"Not really," Stevens gave a dismissive wave of his hand. "Civs are brainless when it comes to shit like this, no offence intended," he quickly motioned towards JT and Evelyn. "Don't get me wrong, you've done fantastic here, guy, but if you were in charge we'd be totally fucked. A civ holds up down here, they're unprepared, they've got no rations, their worried about their pet hamster that's still in their quarters, or their best friend that works in the shit pits on the lower decks: they leave here to find comfort in something they find familiar, and in doing that, they get picked up by the bastards and glued to a wall. They closed up behind them, which kept it clear for their return. They never came back."

"What if they _do _come back?"

"You two," Stevens waived to a pair of Marines. "Set up here, watch the hatch. 4 hour shifts, in a rota, we all take turns. Dawes, you and Johnny are up next, then me and Evie. We'll sort the next shift out from then. Civs, always paired up with a Marine, for their own protection. Other than that – spread out, look around, see if we can find anything to eat down here, something to make our rations spread further. See if we can find something for water, too. We're in the middle of an aquarium; we must be able to get some pure drinking water sorted out. Dig up whatever you can, we'll set up a centre of operations… Dawes?"

Dawes, clutching her portable terminal, tapped the screen that showed the largest area of the dome that wasn't filled with water.

"Aquatic operations. Okay, we're dropping aquatic from the title. Spread out, search, and bring everything back to Operations, okay?"

He waited a beat.

"I still see people here, c'mon people, move."

Operations was a room almost fifty meters in each direction, a perfect cube that nestled near the top of the dome, closest to the underbelly of the craft and filled with a banks of monitors and computer consoles. Each screen displayed different areas of the blister attached to the underside of the craft, screens showing layers of kelp beds, tanks filled with smaller fishes of different colours and designs, and rocks covered in lumps of coral, crawling with large red crustaceans that fed off the algae and smaller creatures that darted in and out of the artificial reefs.

One wall was a thick sheet of glass almost a foot thick, looking into a murky tank that, according to the maps, formed almost two thirds of the aquatorium: a tank that was inhabited by a number of large oceanic beasts that were bound for a research centre in the far reaches of space that, in all likelihood, they would never reach.

Stevens had left his weapons on the control panels that sat in the centre of the room, and stood in front of the large observation window, his face pressed up against the glass as he stared into the dark green murk of the water. He rapped harshly on the glass for the seventh time in as many minutes, but still was disappointed when nothing came to his beck and call.

"What's supposed to be in here again?"

"A school of about eight Mako sharks, and a larger fish, something called a Draconis shark."

"Draconis? Never heard of them," Stevens shook his head. Dawes looked briefly up from the control panels and the console she was tapping commands in to. She pulled up the manifest for the large pool again.

"It's some kind of genetically altered, man-made creature. Says it's something like eighteen meters long."

"Can't see it," Stevens shook his head, then rapped the glass again, speaking in a low, drawn out voice. "Here, fishy fishy fishy."

A slight smile spread across his lips as something shifted in the murk of the dark water, a patch of darkness that glided effortlessly through the mire of the tank. "There's the big boy," Stevens grinned, turning around to look at the people gathered in the operations room. "At least we know they can't come in from there," he said, jerking his finger towards the large glass viewing port. "Fido'll keep them out."

"An aquatic guard dog," JT said with a grin. "As long as they try to paddle in, we'll be safe."

"As long as they keep the fuck away, I'll be happy," Evelyn said, glaring at the window into the home of the monolithic creatures and its smaller brethren. "How long until we're back at Gamma?"

"Too long," Stevens muttered, motioning to the pile of rations and supplies that his men had found in the dome. As it was primarily filled with water, there wasn't much space for any maintenance crew, with equally just as little space or need for supplies. The rations the Marines had managed to salvage from the watery outpost would barely be enough to keep one man going for a week, let alone the ten people remaining in his squad for a fortnight. Beside the food supplies, hanging on rows of exposed pipes and support beams, there were ten pressure suits, each with a helmet and full stock of air. The scavengers had brought them there after their initial perusal of the aquatorium, but they were doing nothing but get in the way where they were. He decided that when Knight returned from his tour of the lower level and knew for sure where the airlock was, he'd get him to move the helmets and air tanks down there: have them ready, just in case.

"Suit up," he ordered, nodding towards the pressure suits. Other than Dawes, the only other people in operations were JT, Evelyn and a grizzled private named Elroy. A seasoned Marine, he had a scar that encircled his left eye, traced down the side of his face and across his neck, which left him mute. His left hand was also missing the two knuckles of his small finger. He sat on the ground in the corner of its room and worked over a collection of weapons that had been handed in: a pair of pulse rifles, a riot gun and three handguns. He had already stripped, cleaned and reassembled the rifles and the shotgun, and was working over the pistols when Stevens gave the order. He didn't argue, just simply stood, tore off his body armour and coveralls off, then grabbed one of the suits and pulled it on.

Elroy came across the Stevens as a run-of-the-mill lifer in the Marines – he'd served his time, did what he was told, and just wanted to live through one day to see the next. Even privates pulled a decent pension if they got through a full service in the Marines, it's just that there wasn't that many that survived that long. Elroy seemed to be one of those men that was happy enough to live through the monotony and collect his golden handshake at the end of it all, and would make sure followed orders to the letter if it meant he was going to survive a little longer.

The suit he'd pulled on was a thin garment, protected along the chest and spine by padded armour, and fit his form as snug as a glove. The toughened material wasn't meant for prolonged exposure to deep space or heavy combat, just regular maintenance on the ships hull like patching holes, or a quick outer transfer from one airlock to another. The armour of the Marine fitted back over the pressure suit with a snap, and he returned to his work, performing the required maintenance on the weapons.

"I'd take ten of him over Knight any day of the week," Stevens nodded as he stripped himself down to his regulation undershirt and shorts and pulled the pressure suit on, before reattaching his own armour once more. "Dedicated, not too twitchy, and doesn't give me any fuckin' lip about statistics and survival."

"He gives me the creeps a little," Dawes confessed as she left her station at the control panel and stripped down before pulling her own suit on.

"Knight gives me the creeps a lot more," confessed JT as he grabbed his own suit and fastened it up as best as he could. It was clear to him that the Marines were familiar with these suits, and had been issued with similar clothing before. JT was in unknown territory, and had to get Stevens to help him out and check all the seals were intact before he felt a little bit more secure. Evelyn reluctantly removed what she could from her own attire and pulled on a fourth suit, allowing Dawes to help check the suit. At least if anything happened now, all they had to do was snap their helmets on and grab one of the oxygen tanks.

"I don't like that," Evelyn announced, nodding towards the oversized glass panel looking into the shark pool. "Fish freak me out, especially giant fish."

"Relax," JT grinned as he walked closer to the glass panel and rapped his knuckles on it. "It's real thick, like the window in a shuttle. None of those things will get through here."

Evelyn was watching him as he talked, but the colour drained from her face as he finished his sentence, her eyes wide in shock and awe, and JT almost felt the creature looming behind him.

"Jesus fucking Christ," muttered Stevens, stepping closer to the window and placing his gloved hand against the window. "You're the biggest, ugliest mother fucker I've ever seen…"

On the other side of the glass, the giant Draconis Shark glided silently past in the murky waters outside, though it took some time for the people in operations to grasp the sheer scale of the leviathan as it swam past. Seen from the side, the dark grey skin of the shark almost shimmered in the muted light of the tank, and as it slowly moved past it blinked its gargantuan eye, a black, almost lifeless disc the same size as a car tyre that rolled back beneath an opaque eyelid. A mouth filled with row upon row of razor sharp teeth, each the size of a man's head and locked in a permanent grin slowly opened and closed, exposing the red-raw flesh of its gums and the mass of scar tissue that had ravaged half of its head. The wounds continued along its head and onto its trunk, with deep gouges and tears covering the vast majority of its dark skin, exposing pale skin that was on the way to healing, but would surely leave a mass of unsightly scar tissue. Its ventral and dorsal fins had suffered an equal amount of damage, looking like a shoal of smaller fish had attacked it.

"Ugly son of a bitch," Stevens repeated his comments again as the thick rudder of a tail sailed out of view and the creature vanished back into the murk. "Looks like he's seen some action, though. Must've put up a hell of a fight."

"Fought with what, though?"

"Well, I've not seen those other sharks that are supposed to be in there. Maybe they got into a little fight?"

"Shit hit the fan over a week ago. Maybe they got hungry, and decided to eat each other: they tried to take a bite out of the big guy, but looks like he won."

"Freaks me out," Evelyn muttered again, snapping the last of her armour on over her suit and glaring at the window as the shadow of the mutilated fish appeared once again for a brief moment in the distance.

"There's a ladder that leads up to an observation platform that encircles the pool," Stevens nodded to the far corner of the room and the solidly constructed ladder that ascended to a secure hatch in the ceiling. "What say we take a look up there?"

"Count me out," Evelyn shook her head, but JT nodded and followed him to the ladder.

"We need to check it out, anyway, make sure it's secure. You three stay here; keep an eye on things. If Knight turns up, detain him; I need to have a word with him. Johnny?"

JT was first up the ladder, making quick work of the rungs and spinning the heavy lock that kept the door sealed shut, like a bulkhead in an old ship on Earth, and with good reason: while magnetic seals and shielding could keep a ship airtight, water had a habit of corroding or shorting these magnetic and powered locks, and in these cases an old fashioned bulkhead with rubber seals were more than adequate.

The hatch opened outwards into the walkway that surrounded the pool, and as JT and Stevens pulled their weight up onto the gangplank, the first thing that struck them was the overpowering scent of salted water and rotting meat. The source of the former was obvious, but the latter took the pair a while to discover the source. Stevens was worried he was going to find a shattered carcass of a maintenance worker with his chest ripped open from the inside, but it turned out to be a pile of rotting meat that had spilled out from an opened drum of shark feed. The room expanded for over two hundred meters in from the wall Stevens and JT stood beside, a semi-circular shaped pool that took up over half of the inverted blister in total.

Following the catwalk around the edge of the pool, the pair moved slowly and surely, keeping hold of the handrail that lined the walkway. Stopping by the overturned meat container, Stevens prodded the exposed mess with his foot, noting that although the spilled contents had began to rot, it hadn't completely turned yet.

"Feeding time," Stevens muttered, picking up a chunk of grey-pink meat and hurling it into the perfectly still pool, watching is it bobbed on the surface before the head of the gargantuan fish broke the water and engulfed it in its massive jaws before sinking back into the murky depths. He stood motionless on the catwalk, staring out into the water as the captain of a boat would from their bridge.

"Hit the lights up here," he finally said, motioning towards the control panel on the wall behind JT. He did as he was told, wiping his hand across a bank of switches and watching as, one by one, the lights dotted across the expansive ceiling blinked to life, chasing away the gloom of the observation deck. As well as the lights above the tank, illuminations within the water itself flickered on, chasing away the shadowy murk of the water and picking out the overwhelming shape of the aquatic predator in his kingdom. On the far side of the tank, almost invisible in the depths despite the new illuminations, he could see seven smaller specks floating in the water.

"There's the other sharks, then," muttered JT, nodding towards the specks. "Seven. Looks like you were right, and the big guy must've finished one of them off himself."

"Or the seven from that group turned on the eighth and devoured it," Stevens offered, looking up from the water and far across to the other side of the room. He could see cranes hovering above water, machinery used to tend to the denizens of the deep, take readings and monitor their vitals, along with a small one-man submersible vehicle secured in its moorings. He followed the catwalk, motioning to JT to do the same, and slowly made his way towards the gathering of equipment. A hundred meters from the equipment, half way across the walkway, Stevens slowed his approach and lifted his weapon, something not sitting right with him as he neared the amalgamation of sensors and submersibles.

"What's the matter?" JT asked, bringing his rifle up just as Stevens did, falling in behind the soldier as he carefully approached the pile of innocuous-looking material.

"Something smells… rank," Stevens admitted, "You getting that? Smells familiar…"

"Just the rotted meat," JT offered, "What else could it be?"

A pungent mix of burning oil and smouldering rubber…

"Fuck," Stevens spat through gritted teeth. "That stink… it's them!"

"Where?"

Stevens carried a small motion detector, though he'd turned to volume down and left it hanging from his belt since setting up base in the control room below: with the constant motion in the tank, and of his troops going backwards and forwards on patrol, he'd decided that he didn't need its persistent bleeping. Now he picked it up from his belt, thumbed up the audio controls, then span around on his heels, scanning the room. Other than JT and the fish in the giant tank, there didn't seem to be anything out the ordinary.

"Stink smells exactly like them," growled Stevens. "You have one of those fuckers clawing over you, you're going to remember that stink for a long time. But there's no sign of them…"

"Maybe they were just passing through?" suggested JT. He seemed to perk up, then lowered his weapon completely. "Maybe the smell's just clinging to your clothing, like smoke? And this is the first time you've been in relatively clean air to breathe? I mean, look at the size of those vents, there's no way those creatures can fit through there."

"'Cept maybe their snake forms, the… what did Knight call them in his report? Calf?"

"I always thought that was a baby cow, myself."

"Tin Can's got a lot of words in his mechanical head. Can't argue with some of the shit he comes up with. Unfortunately. He's talked about these creatures quite a bit, managed to put together quite a report while we were camped out in the landing bay. Won't let me see it, though, some bullshit about not enough security clearance. Asshole."

He blindly fumbled for the comlink he wore, activated it and spoke in a hushed voice.

"This is Stevens. Everyone get back to the control room, double time."

"Stevens?" Dawes' voice was weak and distorted. "Something wrong?"

"Maybe…" his voice trailed off as he continued his assessment of the giant tank, something floating on the surface of the water glistening as it floated out from beneath the walkway. A mass of pale colourless tissue, almost shapeless in mass but then, as Stevens dropped to his knees and peered at the flotsam, he could see a mass of lifeless tissue, a collection of what looked to be horseshoe crabs floating on their backs, legs coiled in around their exposed undersides. Crabs, or giant spiders, they were something new to Stevens, but they seemed out of place… and they had the same pungent stench that Stevens had associated with the creatures.

"Mother fuckers," he hissed, jumping to his feet. He'd forgotten about the other form of the creatures, the fleshy spider that they'd tried to pry from the body in the elevator… how could that happen? Lethargy was the soldier's worst enemy, and it was clear that in this case, Stevens had forgotten a vital aspect about the morphology of the creatures.

"Knight called them the larvae," JT said, backing away from the shapeless raft of dead creatures. "What killed them?"

"Maybe the salt water," Stevens said with a shrug, levelling his rifle on the mass. "Or maybe they did what they were designed to do."

"Which is what Knight said was to impregnate hosts, right?"

"Fuck," Stevens spun, marched for the hatch that would lead back to the control room. "That's it, we're bugging out. Get the fuck out of here, Dawes, prep the team, we're out of here. This isn't a drill."

"What?" JT was hot on the heels of Stevens, casting nervous glances over his shoulder at the floating bodies of the larval creatures. "What's wrong?"

"I just put two and two together, and hope to shit that my maths is wrong."

In the water, the group of seven smaller creatures stirred, shuddered, and one of them broke away from the school, flickering its way to the surface of the water, moving in an ethereal and ghostly way as it neared the surface. It moved fast, and broke the surface with a deafening screech before Stevens was able to make out any details.

Over seven feet tall, the glistening hide of the creature was slick with salt water, a dark green sheen to its otherwise grey-black carapace, with a slightly flattened and widened head. Its talons were short and stubby, webbed with a thin opaque membrane, and its long, flowing tail tipped by a pair of curved chitinous blades, shaped like the crescent of a shark's tail. It lowered itself into a crouch, twisting to one side as it moved, and exposed its back: where most of the creatures had a collection or tubes and spines, this had a thick, black dorsal fin, almost a foot in height. Pressing its body low to the floor, it slithered forwards and opened its mouth, thick drool slipping from its open maw as it exposed three rows of serrated teeth, each set back further from the next. Deep in the recess of its cavernous throat, the pointed stumps of its inner jaw glistened wetly, a threatening hiss escaping the barrel chest of the creature as it pressed forwards.

Stevens lifted his rifle, fired blindly, and a salvo of round slammed into the deck inches from the creature, spraying it with fragments of metal from the grated flooring. It screamed, reared back, then stumbled forwards with another deafening cry. It wasn't as graceful out the water as its brethren, giving Stevens and JT the edge they needed to outrun the creature, stumble through the hatchway back into the control room and cycling it shut. The locks had barely slipped into place when a frantic, loud thumping sounded on the other side of the barrier, the hatch shaking, but holding tight.

For now.

"What's going on?" demanded Evelyn, staring at the sealed hatch and wincing at the thunderous pounding. They all knew the strength the creatures were capable of, and they all knew the hatch wouldn't hold forever.

"Fucking sharks," spat Stevens, motioning to Elroy to hand him the shotgun he'd been working on. "The things killed the fucking sharks, came out of them. We've got a group of swimming creatures out there… eight Mako sharks, seven creatures left. Maybe that's why the big guy had an ugly face, he ate one of them and they've all kept their distance. Mutual respect? Doesn't matter, we need everyone back here now!"

"They're on their way now," Dawes nodded her head. "They should be back in… Jesus!"

The oversized observation window was filled with creatures, now: a school of five creatures swimming back and forth, exploring the glass with their webbed talons and tapping it with the tips of their pronged tails. Their rattling claws scrapping the glass were an eerie accompaniment to the desperate pounding from the hatch, pounding that seemed to have increased in intensity, a sign that two of the creatures were working on the hatch while the rest explored the glass for a way in.

Transfixed by the sight of the creatures gliding gracefully through the water, almost as if they were playing like dolphins, Evelyn jumped, startled, as JT took her hand and squeezed it softly.

"It's okay," he spoke, his voice soft and reassuring. "That stuff's reinforced, a foot thick, they can't break through. Even if they _had _the strength to… have you ever tried throwing a punch under water? The pressure's all different, it doesn't work."

"What about the hatch?" she nodded vaguely towards the thumping opening, not taking her eyes off the curious creatures as they continued to probe the sealed window.

"That won't hold," Stevens shook his head. "Where the fuck is Knight?"

"Here," the android entered the operations area, instantly approaching the viewing window as a moth would be drawn towards a flickering flame. "Fascinating. Another genus of the species; clearly aquatic, derived from the Mako shark, no doubt."

He stared at the window, placed a flattened palm against the window, almost aligned with an exploring talon on the other side. "Fascinating," he repeated, the look on his face reminiscent of a child staring at a Christmas tree.

"We need to get everyone out of here, now," Stevens snapped, indicating the oxygen tanks, helmets and unclaimed suits that still lay around command centre. "We need to get out of here, out the airlock. Where's the rest of the squad?"

"Still scavenging," Dawes whispered, watching as four of the aliens suspended in the brine continued to press themselves against the glass, while the fifth sent a ripple through its powerful body, propelling it upwards, out of view. The ferocity of the pounding on the hatchway increased once more, and the metal started to buckle and twist, allowing the smell of the salty water and rancid meat to seep into the control room.

"They're breaking through," Stevens snapped, grabbing his rifle and crouching beneath the hatch, muzzle pointed upwards as he waited for one of the creatures to present a clear target.

"We've got bigger problems," Knight said, his monotone voice almost raising in pitch as he motioned towards the aquatic viewport, and the dark and distant blur that was speeding towards the window as the group of survivors in the control room watched. The Draconis shark moved swiftly towards the group of aliens exploring the window, and at the last minute rolled itself to the side, slamming into the creatures with its oversized flank and crushing them against the window. One of the creatures was crushed beneath the weight of massive shark, its chitinous carcass cracking and spewing acid into the briny waters as it was instantly killed, while the rest of the creatures tried to swim away, nipping limbs and tails between the wall and the marauding leviathan as they tried to escape. Acid blood oozed from the crushed extremities, it's caustic properties rendered impotent by the neutralising affects of the seawater, and the yellow-green liquid floated in a haze around the frantic creatures in the tank. The hammering on the access stopped, and Stevens warily switched his watchful gaze from the hatch to the window as the aliens dived back into the water and joined their brethren, swarming around the giant shark as it pulled the battle away from the window and into the middle of the pool.

"Fascinating," Knight repeated again.

"They're here?" Evelyn muttered, then turned to face JT. "How'd they get in here?"

"As far as we can tell," Dawes answered, tentatively returned to one of the consoles and hammered the controls, "They're the only ones. Patrols have covered almost every inch of the service corridors here, and they've not seen any sight of any other creatures."

"Still, there's still six of them out there. And unless that big-ass shark wipes them all out, then they'll still want to get at us in here. No amount of flash welding'll hold them off for the time it'll take for us to get to Gamma."

"We've not got anywhere to go, other than the airlock."

"Here they come again," Knight motioned to the window, indicating the darkened blurry shapes in the distance as they flitted from one side to another, darting back and forth before turning and hurtling their bodies towards the viewing port.

"Is the big guy chasing them?"

"Looks like it," Dawes stepped closer, watching the approaching creatures. She frowned, stepped closer to the window. "They're not slowing down."

Stevens stepped closer to the window, curling his lip slightly as he neared the combat android, then watched the rapidly approaching creatures. "She's right, they're not slowing down."

He paused, swallowed hard.

"They're not stopping," he repeated, fixated by the speeding creatures and the monolithic titan chasing them. The aliens were moments from impact before they twirled their bodies around in the salty solution and flicked their tales, propelling themselves away from the window, while the pursuing Draconis shark, unable to rival the dexterity of the smaller, lither creatures, barrelled onwards, its snarling visage bearing down on the window.

"Fuck!"

The shark struck the glass with its pointed snout, the thick glass cracking and splintering from the impact. Stunned by the blow, the eyes of the shark rolled to one side slightly, an incapacitated creature that was an easy target for the aliens as they swarmed around it, tearing in to the hide of the stunned animal with their webbed talons and burrowing into it with their snapping maw. Stevens' attention wasn't focussed on the bloody carnage that had erupted in the holding tank, though: he was more concerned with the fractures that covered half the porthole, and the rate at which they were spreading outwards from the main point of impact. He glanced around the control room feverishly, saw that the air tanks and helmets had not yet been removed, and made a lunge for them.

"Helmets, seal up," he commanded. "That's not going to hold, seal your suits and start sucking on the canned air. Knight, stop staring at the fucking fish in the tank and get yourself suited up. Dawes, help out the doctor, Johnny, get here: there's enough water in the to flood the deck, I've gotten you all through the creatures so far, I'm not going to lose people to drowning. Order everyone to seal themselves in rooms if they've not got oxygen with them, we'll work out a way to come and get them…"

A loud crack sounded in the control room, and the fractures split into a thick dark crack, a geyser of dark water gushing in through the opening: once there was one leak, it wouldn't take long for another to follow; and then another, until the window lost all tensile strength and buckled under pressure. The giant shark was dead now, that much was for sure, but there was no way of telling how many of the aliens were still in there.

No one wasted any time in asking questions: even JT and Evelyn had learned that if you took time to ask anything in situations like this, you could endanger your own life, and people around you. Stevens grabbed a helmet and swung it up onto JT's head, locking it tight to the metallic rim that lined his collar, then helped him into the harness of an air tank, securing the webbing and ensuring the air hoses were tight and sealed before shrugging his own tank and helmet on. He locked it in to place, nudged the HUD controls with his chin so a variety of different opaque readouts appeared in his field of view, then started cycling the airflow.

"Can you hear me?" His voice was tinny, echoing in the confines of the helmet, and waited for a response. JT nodded, then spoke, his voice filling the helmet through the small speakers set into the plastic and metal casing.

"Fine. Little claustrophobic…"

"It'll pass," Stevens reassured him, then looked beyond Evelyn and Dawes where they worked on each other, to Elroy and Knight. The combat synthetic was trying to help the mute Marine put his helmet on. They were closest to the window, and behind that Stevens could see the aliens had rallied back around it, hammering the screen with curled fists and prying the cracks with razor sharp talons. More glass cracked and shattered, gave way and tumbled to the floor, lost in the outpour of brackish water that spilled across the deck and crept along the decking, shorting equipment as it went.

With an almighty crash and a gush of ice-cold water, the window finally gave way and the operations room was flooded with the numbing fluid that rushed in and swirled around the chamber.

Evelyn's eyes fluttered open, and she numbly looked around her surroundings as the fragments of her memory fell back into place. They came in erratic flashes that she mentally rearranged into a coherent sequence. Aliens in the holding tank, the Draconis shark ramming the porthole, cracks becoming splinters becoming holes becoming nothing as the waters washed through the operations chamber. It was the shock of the cold water against her skin-tight suit that had made her black out, and as she finally came around, she found the world around her a grim and muted shade of green as the salty water enveloped her. She moved her limbs, found that she was able too move, albeit slowly, and gently rolled her head from side to side, taking in the vista of the flooded room.

The jagged remains of the window stood before her, looking out into the giant holding tank and the miasma of gore that swam the dead body of the shark, and all around her she could see the odd winking light of equipment and readouts that had survived the immersion in the waters. She tried to move a leg, found that her feet were rooted to the spot, and looked down, puzzled. Her legs seemed fine, intact, her booted feet nestled securely against the deck, and she raised her eyes again to see if she could see anyone else who had survived.

From the murk of the distant waters, one of the aquatic aliens darted in to sight, making a beeline for her as it snaked towards her, its powerful and agile body rippling from side to side as it propelled itself through the water with deadly accuracy. Evelyn was reminded of footage she'd seen as a child of a sea snake gliding through the water, and was reminded of the vision she'd seen when these creatures had first arrived, of the glistening serpent that had risen from that engineer's ruptured chest cavity. Would the same fate befall her, especially seeing as she couldn't move with her partial paralysis?

The water around her vibrated and jostled her, and she watched as a trio of bullets slammed into the side of the creature, smashing in to its ribcage and sending it careening off to one side. It wasn't dead, Evelyn could tell that by the way it thrashed and opened it's mouth; silent screams in the watery prison, but it had been injured enough to give second thought to approaching in such a brazen manner. Evelyn turned her head, saw a figure emerge from the gloom of the oppressive water and approach her, a dull yellow light mounted atop their helmet as they approached. It reached out a gauntleted hand, took her wrist, and knocked one of the switches mounted on her bracer.

"Can you hear me now?"

Evelyn recognised the voice of Dawes over the tinny speakers behind her head and nodded a response, but within the confines of the casing around her head, she doubted that this could be seen.

"Yes," she finally managed, "Yes, I can hear you.'

"Are you okay?' Dawes said, her expressionless helmet moving up and down as she looked over the doctor.

"I can't move my legs," she confessed. She couldn't feel them, but didn't know if that was down to the cold pressure, or an injury to her spine. She felt fine.

'Suits have got magnetic locks on the soles of the feet," Dawes pointed a thick gloved hand down to her own feet, then adjusted another set of switches on Evelyn's bracer. "You'll be able to walk now, but slowly, and possibly a little clumsily, at least until you get used to it. JT said you didn't like underwater?"

"Fish, I don't like fish," Evelyn corrected her, taking a tentative step. The water around her offered a lot of resistance, but she managed to cover a small amount of distance with her first attempt. "The fish is dead now… but I'd rather swim with a shark than those creatures. Where are they?"

"Stevens said he thinks he saw them swim off through down the corridor. From what we can tell, all the maintenance corridors of the blister have been flooded."

"Any survivors?"

"No, com channels are dead."

"Just the six of us, then?"

"Five," Stevens voice came over the radio as he stepped closer into Evelyn's peripheral vision: as he stood beside Dawes, the two became almost indistinguishable, the only difference being the different designs on their body armour. Another reason why they insisted on customising? To stand out in battlefield conditions where all other forms of identification weren't possible?

"Five? Who's dead? God, where's Johnny?"

"Here," another suited person stepped closer approached Evelyn from behind, wrapped an arm around her, then leaned in closer, the darkened faceplate coming in to contact with her own. At such a close proximity, and with the light from his helmet bouncing off her own faceplate, the opacity of his visor was just right so she could see details of his face. Relief, fear, worry: all these emotions, and more. She was sure he could see her, too, and she smiled, though she cut that short as she felt her lips start to tremble. There was enough water outside her helmet, the didn't want to drown in her own tears.

"Elroy," Stevens continued. "Couldn't get the suit on and sealed in time. Poor bastard. At least it was quick, though… better than being toyed with by those creatures."

"And Knight?" she asked. Though the presence of the combat synthetic wasn't the Marine's idea of sanctuary, she knew that the robustness of the android would certainly improve their chances of survival in any unforeseen circumstances.

"Operational, but silent," Stevens said. Though she couldn't see his face, she could hear him smiling. "He's not got a suit or an air tank on, but he's built to last. He might rust a couple of weeks down the line, but hopefully we'll be in Gamma by the time we have to deal with that. We're going to have to get him suited up, though. He can survive underwater, but he can't survive deep space without a suit."

"Space?"

"We're cut off, now. Those things are loose in here, and the only way we can be sure of our survival is by getting out of here and finding a safer port of call. We can't go up, they've probably taken over all the cargo decks now, made it in to their nest or whatever you want to call it, spreading out from engineering. We get on the skin of the ship, walk up a couple of levels, get in through an emergency airlock and find someplace else secure. Maybe even see if we can pass through one of the umbilical corridors and get aboard _The Vengeance_."

"You think that will work?"

"We've got four hours of air in these tanks, give or take ten minutes. You either drown here, stick your head out in bug central upstairs, or crawl on the skin outside. What would you rather do? Now, the pulse rifles work underwater, but the velocity of the bullet's a lot lower, so make sure your shots count. Knight's guarding the entrance, but we've still got one of the bastard swimming around here, probably in the main tank. We're going to leave, and manually seal the door behind us, hopefully keep him confined to his room. One less bastard to worry about. C'mon.'

Stevens spun on his heel and slowly plodded through the water-logged room, and after a little bit of studying, Evelyn and JT copied his exaggerated walk and traced their way to the door. They past what Evelyn first thought to be a loose suit that had been left on its hanger, but as the shade slowly rotated, she could see the face of Elroy, mouth gaping wide in a silent scream, eyes bulging and staring vacantly ahead. What little hair he did have lazily wavered from side to side as his body bobbed up and down in the small currents created by the group's movement. JT tried his best to position himself between Evelyn and the floating corpse, but in the past week Evelyn had seen a lot worse than a drowned man in half a space suit.

The doorway was guarded by Knight, as Stevens had promised, and for a moment Evelyn found the scene bemusing: while the four of them were kitted out in pressure suits and helmets, here was what looked simply like a man with a robotic arm, standing casually by an underwater doorway while papers and small pieces of lightweight equipment floated uselessly in front of him. His hair wavered in the same fashion Elroy's had, and in one hand he held a pulse rifle, in the other a motion sensor. By his feet lay his helmet, attached to an airtank, but not activated. A small bubble of air floated in the top of the helmet, a pocket of oxygen that would be flushed from the system when he donned the breathing apparatus.

"Freaky, right? Combat synths are tougher than normal droids," Stevens announced as he ushered the group through the hatchway and manually cycled the door shut, then snapped his welding torch out and started the weld the door to its surround. Evelyn had never seen anyone weld underwater, and the vision of the light blue flare fusing the two surfaces together while the unsuited form of Knight stood guard only added to the surreal nature of the underwater venture. "They're not as fragile, their skins tougher, and they can operate under pressurised environments. Not hard vacuum, they'd still pop like a ripe cantaloupe if they weren't sealed." He paused from his welding, nodded towards the helmet on the deck, then up towards Knight. He took the hint, and pulled the headgear on, sealing himself up into the suit and running through the diagnostics required to flush the system of the water.

"The rifles work underwater, to some extent," Stevens repeated himself. "Don't go full auto, that's not going to work too well. Don't rely on the trackers, either. Water's going to mess with the sensors of the thing, throw out ghost signals and everything else under the sun. You online, metal man?"

"Everything is operating under nominal parameters," Knight's monotonous voice sounded, slightly bubbly and garbled as the last of the water was vented from his suit.

"Did you get what I said about the tracker?"

"My own sensors are running as best the current environment allows. I shall be vigilant for any signs of the creatures, or any vital signs of anyone who may have managed to seal themselves away."

"Don't hold your breath," Stevens muttered grimly. The gallows humour wasn't intentional, but strangely it brought the slightest grin to Evelyn. "The flooding of these levels was quick, real quick. I doubt anyone had time to get sealed up, and even if they did, how are we going to get them out of wherever they're holed up?"

Evelyn nodded a silent agreement.

"And the whole area's flooded?" JT asked, his gauntleted hand fumbling for Evelyn's as he spoke.

"As soon as the large holding tank began to lose water, the large holding tanks above us were flushed into the system to keep water levels at a constant: a failsafe to protect the livestock. We estimate approximately ninety eight percent is submerged," Knight's voice rumbled through the close-circuit comlinks. JT gave a low whistle, impressed at the speed the water had spread, and the whistle carried through the speakers with a piercing screech.

"Try not to do that, Johnny," Stevens scolded, finishing off the welding and stepping back from the door. Turning around, he brought his rifle up to bear and nodded towards the ominous and waterlogged corridor trailing away from him. "Stick close, eyes open, we keep moving until we hit an airlock, then we flush ourselves out."

"Stick close to me, Johnny," whispered Evelyn, wrapping both hands around JT's and keeping hold tight. He didn't respond verbally, but his hand quickly tightened and relaxed: a nervous twitch, or a reassuring squeeze?

The corridors had been ominous and foreboding before they were flooded, but now the briny solution that filled them added even more of a feeling of impending doom. Lights set into recessed cavities in the wall and ceiling created pockets of glowing water, while others flickered and sputtered.

"Freaks the shit out of me," Evelyn confessed, watching each corner of the corridor, her movements slow and lumbering against the pressure of the water around her. "The sooner we get out of here, the better."

"It would appear that the creatures are heading for the entryway above us. I am detecting a number of ripples in the current that suggest they're moving away from us. Which is contrary to everything we know about them so far."

"They're going to pop the cork," Stevens muttered. "Let the rest of the bastards in."

"They can survive underwater, with no air?"

"Hard vacuum didn't seem to slow them down. If they've gone up, we're heading down. Get out the escape hatch, and crawl across the ship, same plan as before. Double-time, people."

The first junction they reached offered little choice in their direction: while both left and right corridors tapered off into darkened corridors, a hatchway set into the deck plating loomed ominously before them, like the mouth of a creature, hungrily waiting to be fed.

"We gotta keep going down, right?"

Dawes consulted her data tablet, the sickly green glow from her screen illuminating her expressionless helmet.

"Yeah, it's the only way down. Hatch is open, too. One of those things could be down there…"

"Fuck it," Stevens straddled the hole, his weapon pointing down through the opening. "If it's the only way, then it's the only way."

He shifted his footing, jumped up, then let his body sink slowly through the hatchway, slowly emerging in the lower deck. He signalled it was clear, and Dawes followed, then JT and Evelyn, leaving Knight to guard their rear.

The lower level was darker than above, illuminated only by the pad Dawes held, and the flashlight strapped to the top of Steven's rifle.

"Darker than shit here," he complained, panning his weapon around from left to right, up and down, slowly covering all angles. "Someone hit the power, see if we still have lights down here."

After a few brief seconds of fumbling blindly against the wall, JT finally found the relay switch on the wall, but hesitated before flipping the switch. "If I hit this, it's not going to short out in the water and kill us all, is it?"

"There is a small saline content to the water, though I doubt it would be adequate to conduct sufficient charge to kill us," Knight's monotonous voice rumbled over the speakers. "Even then, our suits provide suitable insulation against environmental hazards such as…"

"No would suffice," JT muttered as he threw the switch. One by one, the lights running the length of the octagonal corridor flickered to life, illuminating the scene before them.

An upturned corpse floating idly in the water slowly turned to face them, vacant eyes and shocked expression a mirror of the man they'd left in the control room: his death looked to have been quick, his weapon and supplies floating beside him, but his lower extremities looked like they had been ravaged by a wild animal…

And beyond the corpse, coming increasingly closer…

A whirling dervish of black resinous armour and a flurry of bubbles streaking towards them, a living torpedo bent on destruction as it flashed its teeth, flexed muscles along the length of its body, and swiftly extended its talons. Streaks of thick saliva trailed from its maw, the deathly grin of an emotionless killer as it homed in on its targets. It opened its mouth further, a silent roar swallowed by the watery surroundings as it reached striking distance.

Both Stevens and Dawes opened up with their weapons simultaneously, a muted staccato of gunfire and light that tore through the water and impacted against the speeding demon, exploding on impact, severing limbs and shattering ribs as the twirling creature halted abruptly, wounds oozing weakened acid into the water. Neither Dawes nor Stevens relaxed their pose, keeping their weapons up and raised in case there was another of the creatures in the aquatic corridor, but there were none.

"All left for the entrance?" Evelyn muttered, looking questioningly towards Knight.

"I'm sorry," Knight responded, his voice unable to convey any emotion. "My sensors did indicate that they had left. I'll run a diagnostic on myself at the earliest opportunity. Until then…"

"You'll do as you're told. Eyes open, weapons ready. If we run into any more of those fuckers down here, _you _can deal with them."


End file.
